Dayton has a hiring secret most local companies walk right past. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base sits just northeast of the city. It is the largest single-site employer in Ohio. More than 38,000 people work there. That count is military, civilian, and contractor combined.

Those are not infantry jobs. Wright-Patterson is an acquisition and engineering hub. The base runs weapons programs from idea to fielding. It runs research labs. It runs intelligence shops. The talent leaving there every year is technical, organized, and used to running million-dollar work.

If you run a midsize company in the Miami Valley, this is your local talent pool. You do not need a Fortune 500 recruiting budget to tap it. You need to know what these people did and how to read it. This guide breaks that down.

What does Wright-Patterson AFB actually produce?

People hear "Air Force base" and picture pilots and flight lines. Wright-Patterson is different. It is a brain center, not a runway. Most of the work there is acquisition, engineering, science, and intelligence.

Here is what the major commands on base do. Each one trains a different kind of civilian-ready hire.

You can confirm all of this on the base's own Wright-Patterson fact sheets. The point is simple. This is where engineering, program management, and analysis talent gets built. And a lot of it stays in Dayton.

One caution. Do not box people in by branch or base. A person can have an Air Force record and still bring skills your shop needs. Read the work, not the uniform.

Why should a Dayton company hire these veterans?

The strongest reason is local. These people already live here. Many bought homes near the base. Their kids are in Greene and Montgomery county schools. Their spouse may already work in town. When they separate, they want to stay.

That means you are not fighting a relocation battle. You are hiring someone who is rooted in the area and wants a Dayton job. That is rare and valuable.

The second reason is the work ethic and the track record. Veterans show up, lead teams, and hit deadlines. The national numbers back this up. In 2025, the unemployment rate for all veterans was lower than the rate for people who never served.

That gap is not an accident. Veterans land work faster because they bring skills employers want. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the 2025 veteran unemployment rate at 3.5 percent. Nonveterans sat at 4.2 percent. Gulf War era II veterans came in at 3.6 percent.

The third reason is fit. A midsize company runs lean. You need people who own a problem and drive it. A program manager from AFLCMC has done exactly that for years, on bigger budgets than yours.

How do you read a Wright-Patterson resume?

This is where most local hiring managers stumble. The resume comes in full of jargon. Acronyms, program names, system codes. It looks foreign. So it gets passed over.

That is a mistake. The work behind the jargon often matches your open role exactly. You just have to translate it. Here is a real example of how a base resume reads before and after.

See the difference? The first version sounds like another world. The second version is a job posting you could publish today. The skill was always there. The words just needed a translator.

Build the habit of searching both languages. If you want a "supply chain analyst," a base resume might say "logistics readiness officer." If you want a "systems engineer," it might say "T&E lead." Search the military term and the civilian term side by side.

Which local roles fit this talent best?

Not every Wright-Patterson veteran fits every job. But the base produces clear clusters of skill. Match your open role to the right cluster and the hire gets easy.

Here are the four buckets that show up most often from this base.

If you run a manufacturing shop, the program and operations bucket fits you. If you run an engineering firm or a tech company, the technical bucket is your lane. For more on the technical side, see our guide on hiring veterans as field service engineers and how to build a cybersecurity veteran hiring pipeline.

Aerospace and defense work runs deep in this region too. If your company touches that space, our breakdown of how aerospace primes hire veterans shows the roles these veterans slot into.

What about security clearances?

A lot of Wright-Patterson talent holds a clearance. NASIC and AFRL work happens at the secret and top secret level. For some Dayton employers, that is a huge bonus. For others it does not matter at all.

Here is the honest version. A clearance is a trust signal. The government already ran a deep background check on this person. That has value even if your role needs no clearance.

But be careful with promises. A clearance can be active, current but inactive, or expired. The rules around reinstating one are specific. Do not tell a candidate their old clearance "transfers" to your contract. And do not write off a strong candidate just because theirs lapsed. Check the real status first.

If your business does hold contracts that need cleared people, this matters more. We cover the details in our guides on finding cleared veteran talent and what happens when a veteran's clearance has lapsed. Other big-base towns face the same setup. See how employers hire cleared veterans in Tampa and near Huntsville and Redstone.

How does a midsize company win against the big primes?

You are not the only one hiring near Wright-Patterson. Large defense contractors recruit here hard. They have name recognition and deep pockets. So how does a midsize Dayton company compete?

You do not win on salary. You win on three other things.

Lead with those three in your job posting and your first call. Do not try to out-spend the primes. Out-move them. For more on how smaller shops do this, read how government contractors hire cleared veterans and how a midsize company hires cleared veterans without a defense background.

When is the best time to reach Dayton veterans?

The best hire is the one you reach before they hit the open market. Once a Wright-Patterson veteran is unemployed and applying, the primes and recruiters are already on them. Reach them earlier and you skip that fight.

Here is the timeline that works for a local employer.

One note on SkillBridge. It is a working tryout, not a hire. The person is still on active duty and the military still pays them. You make a real offer when they separate. To set it up right, read how to become a SkillBridge host company and how to convert a SkillBridge intern into a full-time hire.

You can also reach people the moment they decide to separate. Our guide on how to hire transitioning service members before separation walks through it. And for the events angle, see how employers source veterans at military job fairs.

How do you keep your job postings veteran-friendly?

You can do everything right and still scare off a great veteran with one bad job posting. Small wording choices matter. A req that demands "5 years in the commercial widget industry" tells a base veteran they need not apply. Even when they could do the job.

Fix the wording. Ask for the skill, not the exact industry background. Try "experience managing technical projects." Drop the line that says "must have private-sector PM experience." That small change opens your role to the whole base.

Also list the clearance as a plus, not a hard bar, unless your contract truly requires it. Many strong veterans let a clearance lapse. Boxing them out on day one costs you good people. For a full check, read our guide on how to audit your job reqs for veteran-hostile language.

How do you tap the Dayton veteran pool?

Wright-Patterson is one of the densest pools of technical, program, and analyst talent in the country. Most of it stays in the Miami Valley after service. A local midsize employer that knows how to read the resumes and reach people early has a real edge.

Best Military Resume helps you skip the slow part. We have over 1,000 new profiles added every month. We have built more than 60,000 resumes. That gives you a steady, growing pool of veteran candidates you can search by skill and role, including people in the Dayton area.

If you want to put your open roles in front of that talent, reach out to access BMR's veteran talent pool. Tell us the role. We help you find the Dayton-area veterans who fit it.