Government
Recruiters

A government recruiter sources, screens, and places talent for federal, state, local, defense, and contractor roles, factoring in clearance level, contract vehicle, compliance framework, and agency-specific onboarding before submitting a single candidate. The job is harder than commercial recruiting because the constraints layer on top of each other. A cleared cloud engineer who can pass an ATO review is a smaller pool than just “cloud engineers,” which is itself a smaller pool than “engineers.” Sequencing the screen against those filters in the right order is where most generalist firms fall apart.

Both. Government IT is a major practice, but KORE1 also places engineering, finance, healthcare, HR, procurement, project management, and administrative talent across federal, state, and contractor environments. The government IT page covers the IT-specific bench. This page covers the broader cross-functional practice. Pick the entry point that matches your role.

Most cleared roles get qualified candidates submitted within 14 to 17 business days, sometimes faster for in-demand specialties already in our cleared network. New clearance sponsorship adds four to twelve months for the investigation depending on level, which is government timing, not ours. We always flag clearance requirements as either “must hold active” or “willing to sponsor” upfront. Discovering three months into a search that a “nice to have” clearance is really a hard gate is the kind of misalignment that kills programs.

Both, plus the contractor ecosystem that supports each. Our state and local work covers ERP modernization at agency level, public health and human services staffing, transportation and infrastructure programs, and county-level IT and finance roles. We adjust for cooperative purchasing vehicles like NASPO ValuePoint, state-specific MSAs, and local procurement nuances that don’t exist at the federal level.

At minimum: FISMA, FedRAMP, NIST 800-53 and the broader Cybersecurity Framework, CMMC for the defense industrial base, ITAR for export-controlled work, SOX for financial systems, and HIPAA for healthcare-adjacent roles like VA and IHS. Recruiters who don’t know the difference between FISMA Low and FISMA High waste your time on candidates who can’t operate at the required posture. We screen against the specific framework the role demands, not a generic “compliance experience” checkbox. The authoritative reference for most of these is the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, which our team uses to map candidate experience to specific control families before submission.

Mixed. Roles handling classified data or requiring SCIF access are on-site, full stop. Many civilian agency roles, state government positions, and contractor support functions allow hybrid or fully remote work, especially post-2020. Our concentration of cleared on-site placements clusters in the DMV region, where our Washington DC staffing team recruits across Northern Virginia, Suburban Maryland, and the District. We clarify location requirements at the start of every engagement so candidates aren’t surprised in week three.

Government roles typically carry a modest premium over commercial rates, driven by clearance requirements, a smaller qualified candidate pool, and the compliance overhead of vetting against frameworks like FISMA and CMMC. For contract roles, bill rates are often anchored against GSA schedule labor categories or state cooperative rates, which keeps pricing predictable. For direct hire, fees follow standard percentage-of-salary models with no hidden markup. According to BLS Occupational Employment Statistics, federal IT and engineering compensation now tracks within 8 to 12 percent of private sector medians in major metros, which has narrowed the historical gap and changed how we benchmark offers.