Fort Worth · Arlington · Westlake · Alliance · IT staffing for Tarrant County
Fort Worth IT Staffing Agency for Tech Talent That Never Worked at a Tech Company
Tarrant County has more people at brokerage firms than at IT services firms, and almost twice as many building aircraft and their parts. So a lot of its strongest engineers draw a paycheck from Lockheed Martin, Charles Schwab, American Airlines or BNSF. We recruit them where they actually sit.
it services jobs per 100 private jobs · 2025
BLS county employment census, private employers
KORE1 is a Fort Worth IT staffing agency that places software, cloud, security and data professionals with Tarrant County employers on contract, contract-to-hire and direct hire terms, with a qualified shortlist in 17 days on average. The Fort Worth searches sit inside KORE1’s IT staffing services practice, which has recruited technical people since 2005. A year after the start date, 92% of them haven’t left.
Last updated: October 11, 2026
12,734
People working at IT services firms in Tarrant County in 2025. Dallas County counted 64,208, five times as many, with less than twice the private workforce.
6.15x
Tarrant County’s share of aerospace manufacturing jobs against the national share. That’s 22,742 people, next to 6,677 in Dallas County.
$144,394
Average pay at Tarrant County IT services firms, $6,187 more than the same industry paid in Dallas County. Fewer shops. Not cheaper ones.
17days
Average time from the first intake call to a Fort Worth IT shortlist. Twelve months after the hire, 92% of those placements are still on the job.
The problem
Why Fort Worth IT Staffing Can’t Run on a Dallas Playbook
Most IT staffing in North Texas is built around Dallas, Plano and Richardson, and with reason. Collin County runs nearly four times the national share of jobs in computer systems design. Dallas County runs more than double. A recruiter there can fill a Java seat from people already sitting at consultancies and software companies, people who change jobs every couple of years and fully expect the next call to come from a staffing firm rather than a hiring manager.
Tarrant County doesn’t work that way. Its IT services industry sits below the national share, at 0.81 in the 2025 federal county data, and software publishers barely register at 0.14. The tech work is real. It just lives inside other industries.
Which ones? Aerospace runs at six times the national share, and securities and investment firms, led by Schwab’s campus in Westlake, run at 1.8 times it.
Then there’s an airline, a railroad, GM Financial’s downtown tower and a handful of hospital systems, every one of them employing hundreds of developers, analysts and network people, and not one of them files with the government as an IT company.
In Fort Worth the IT talent pool is on someone else’s payroll, in someone else’s industry.
Defense supply chain
IT Staffing for Fort Worth’s Aerospace and Defense Suppliers
Lockheed Martin builds the F-35 at Air Force Plant 4 in west Fort Worth, and a long tail of Tarrant County suppliers makes parts, software and test gear for it and for Bell’s rotorcraft. Their IT departments don’t look like a bank’s. Networks are segmented, laptops stay in the building, and half the job is proving it to an assessor.
Any supplier handling controlled unclassified information is bound by DFARS 252.204-7012 and the 110 requirements in NIST SP 800-171, whatever happens next with CMMC certification. So a systems administrator who has carried those controls through a real assessment is worth more here than a stronger generalist who hasn’t.
Export rules narrow the pool again, because technical data controlled under ITAR can only go to U.S. persons as 22 CFR 120.62 defines them, which takes in citizens, green card holders and certain protected individuals and leaves out H-1B holders. We confirm status on the first call. Before anyone sees a drawing.
Market report, 2025 annual averages
Where Fort Worth’s Tech Workers Actually Work, Read Like a Stockyards Report
Laid out the way a livestock market report reads in this town. Receipts first, then each class against the comparison market, which here is Dallas County. One row per industry, both counties on one doubling scale, and the dashed line is the national share.
kore1 · fort worth, tx
2025 annual averages
Tarrant County Tech Labor Report
Receipts 904,036 private jobs in Tarrant County, up 0.9% on 2024. Dallas County 1,643,802.
Compared with Dallas County IT services, hosting and software publishing thin. Aerospace, securities and hospitals heavier. Air transportation and rail not reported for Tarrant, withheld by BLS to protect employer confidentiality.
Computer systems design and IT servicesthe shelf most IT recruiters shop
tarrant 0.81dallas 2.28
12,734 jobs at $144,394 average pay. Dallas County 64,208 at $138,207. Thin, and paying higher.
Data processing and hosting
tarrant 0.36dallas 1.21
1,152 jobs. Dallas County 6,891, six times as many.
Software publishers
tarrant 0.14dallas 0.73
575 jobs. Dallas County 5,516. Hardly anyone in Tarrant sells software as the product.
Aerospace product and parts manufacturing
tarrant 6.15dallas 1.01
22,742 jobs at $148,130. Dallas County 6,677. Heaviest class on the sheet.
Securities and investment firms
tarrant 1.80dallas 1.33
12,982 jobs at $164,715, more people than IT services. Dallas County 17,264.
Banks, lenders and auto finance
tarrant 1.45dallas 1.79
24,209 jobs at $107,031. Dallas County 53,836. Close on share, both well over the national line.
General hospitals
tarrant 0.96dallas 0.69
32,332 jobs. Dallas County 41,562. Tarrant carries the larger share of its workforce in hospital work.
Each figure is a location quotient, an industry’s share of a county’s private jobs divided by its share nationwide. 1.0 matches the U.S., 2.0 is double. Average pay covers every job in the industry, not just the technical seats. Orange marks the IT services row. Every figure comes from the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, 2025 annual averages, in the Tarrant County file and program overview.
Finance and transportation
Brokerage, Airline and Railroad IT Inside One County Line
Schwab moved its headquarters to Westlake, in the county’s northern tip, and securities and investment firms in the county now employ 12,982 people at an average of $164,715. That’s more people than every IT services firm in the county combined. A good number of them write code for a living.
American Airlines and BNSF Railway both keep headquarters in Fort Worth, and the federal county tables won’t print their industries at all, because a Tarrant figure for air transportation or rail would expose one employer’s payroll. Crew scheduling. Positive train control. Serious systems, from revenue management to car-tracking data, built and kept running by people whose resumes say airline or railroad rather than software, which is exactly why a keyword search misses them.
That’s the hiring problem in short. A strong platform engineer at a Westlake brokerage isn’t browsing job boards and won’t take a call that opens with a keyword list. Open with the system and the problem instead. They listen to that.
Roles we staff
The IT Roles Fort Worth Employers Hire Through Us
Pay for these seats is set metro-wide. The May 2025 federal wage survey treats Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington as one market, with software developers at a $133,290 median, so a Fort Worth band is rarely the discount people expect. The orange card is the seat with the thinnest local bench.
software
Software Engineer
Java, .NET and Python on systems that run aircraft parts, trades and freight. DFW median $133,290, with the 90th percentile at $179,400. More on our software engineer staffing desk.
cloud
Cloud and Platform Engineer
AWS and Azure migrations inside companies that still run a mainframe in the next room. Our cloud engineer staffing team screens for both.
security · thinnest bench
Cybersecurity Engineer
SIEM, incident response and 800-171 evidence for defense suppliers. DFW median $133,610 across 7,080 jobs, and the cleared slice is small. See cybersecurity staffing.
data
Data Engineer and Analyst
Snowflake, Databricks and the SQL Server warehouse nobody has retired yet. We run these through data engineer staffing.
infrastructure
Systems and Network Administrator
Segmented networks, Active Directory and locked-down endpoints. DFW median $103,260, and audit experience moves that number up fast.
leadership
IT Manager and Director
People who’ve run IT inside a regulated business that isn’t a tech company. The DFW median for IT managers is $173,810.
How we source
How We Recruit IT Talent Already Working in Tarrant County
Job boards return the people who are looking.
In Fort Worth that’s a small slice, since many of the strongest candidates are four years into a steady job at a company that isn’t in tech, that pays them well, and that tends to hold on to its IT people through the layoff cycles that hit pure software companies harder.
So we search by employer and by system, not by title. Who ran the ERP cutover at a parts supplier off Interstate 35W? Who built the scheduling feed an airline’s ops center depends on?
We call about the work first and the role second, and we hear “not now, call me in March” a lot. We call in March.
Then we price the offer against the drive. In our searches the commute mostly runs one way, with Fort Worth engineers weighing Dallas and Plano offers far more often than Dallas engineers come west. Two remote days a week can close that gap for less than a raise would. Sometimes it can’t.
Coverage
Fort Worth IT Staffing Across Tarrant County and the West Metroplex
Each part of the county gets tagged with the industry that sets its IT pay, because that’s usually who you’re recruiting against.
auto finance · health
Downtown and the Medical District
GM Financial’s headquarters downtown, and south of it the Medical District around Cook Children’s and JPS. Lending platforms, EHR integration and clinical data.
aerospace · defense
West Side and Benbrook
Lockheed Martin’s plant beside Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base, plus the machine shops and test labs that feed it. Export-controlled and cleared IT, with engineers through aerospace engineering staffing.
brokerage · rail · logistics
North Fort Worth, Alliance and Westlake
Schwab in Westlake, BNSF on the north side, and the AllianceTexas distribution corridor. Trading platforms, warehouse systems and freight data.
health · airline · homebuilding
Arlington and the Mid-Cities
Texas Health Resources and D.R. Horton in Arlington, American Airlines by DFW Airport, and Hurst, Euless and Bedford between them. Candidates here drive either direction.
East of the county line our Dallas IT staffing desk covers Plano, Richardson and Irving. For hiring outside tech, see our Fort Worth staffing agency page and the Arlington staffing agency desk.
Engagement
Contract IT Talent, Contract-to-Hire and Direct Hire for Tarrant County Teams
Plenty of the Fort Worth IT work we see arrives as program money with an end date attached, tied to a contract award or an audit finding, while the permanent headcount that would cover the same work never gets approved at all. Pick the model that matches the money.
funded by a program, end date known
Contract IT Staffing
Engineers for a cloud migration, an assessment or a system cutover, billed hourly and done when the work is. We quote the rate against DFW wage data, not a national average.
Contract Staffing →see the work, then convert
Contract-to-Hire
Common for security and platform seats, where a team wants to watch someone operate inside its controls before making the offer.
Contract-to-Hire →long-term seat, slower start
Direct Hire
IT managers, architects and senior engineers, recruited out of the aerospace, finance and transportation employers on this page.
Direct Hire Staffing →Common Questions
What does a software engineer cost in Fort Worth?
Budget about $133,290 for a mid-level software developer, the May 2025 median for the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro, and closer to $179,400 for a senior engineer at the 90th percentile.
Federal occupation data doesn’t split Fort Worth from Dallas, so those are metro numbers covering everyone from Denton to Ellis County, and the Tarrant end of that range is set by the same aerospace and finance employers bidding for the same people. Inside Tarrant County, IT services firms paid an average of $144,394 across all their jobs in 2025, ahead of Dallas County. Don’t plan on a west side discount.
Is the IT talent pool in Fort Worth smaller than in Dallas?
Smaller inside IT services firms, with 12,734 jobs in Tarrant County against 64,208 in Dallas County in 2025, but deeper inside aerospace, brokerage and hospital IT.
The people exist. Most of them have spent years learning one employer’s systems, controls and approval chains, which makes them slower to move and worth considerably more once they do, so the search is a longer conversation than a Dallas consultancy hire. They’re employed by Lockheed’s suppliers, Schwab, American and the health systems, and they have to be recruited off those payrolls rather than pulled from a staffing bench. Different work.
Can you staff IT roles that need U.S. persons or a clearance?
Yes, we staff export-controlled and cleared IT roles, and we confirm U.S. person status under the ITAR definition on the first call, before a candidate sees any technical data.
Cleared searches take longer. The pool is small and nobody leaves a cleared job casually. Tell us at intake whether you’ll sponsor a clearance or need one active on day one, because that single line changes the search more than anything else in the job description.
Does CMMC change which IT people a defense supplier should hire?
Less than the headlines suggest, since the controls underneath CMMC, DFARS 252.204-7012 and NIST SP 800-171, already apply to any supplier that handles controlled unclassified information.
Certification dates have moved more than once. The control set hasn’t. Hire someone who has implemented and documented the 110 requirements through an actual assessment and you’re covered either way. NIST publishes the full 800-171 text for free.
How fast can KORE1 fill a Fort Worth IT role?
17 days, on our average, from the intake call to a shortlist worth interviewing, with 92 of every 100 placements still in the seat after twelve months.
Contract seats often move faster. Senior security and cleared roles usually run longer, because the right people are employed, comfortable and need a reason to listen. If your band won’t get there, you’ll hear it in week one.
Will Fort Worth IT candidates commute to Dallas, or the other way around?
In our searches the flow runs mostly east, so a Fort Worth employer competes with Dallas and Plano offers while a Dallas employer seldom pulls candidates west.
Hybrid schedules softened it, and an offer that spells out exactly which days are in the office, and which office, now does more to win a cross-county candidate than another five thousand dollars of base. An engineer in Benbrook might take two days a week in Plano for the right number, rarely five. If your seat is in Westlake or Alliance, say so in the posting, since for anyone in north Tarrant or Denton County that’s the easy drive.
How do IT staffing agency fees work in Fort Worth?
Contract IT is billed hourly as the worker’s pay rate plus a markup, and direct hire is a one-time fee figured as a percentage of the hire’s first-year base pay.
Both depend on the role and the volume. We put the numbers in writing before the search starts, so nothing about the cost shows up late.
Tell us the seat and the system. We’ll tell you whose payroll the candidates are on.
Send the role, the approved range and the office address. You’ll get back where those people work today in Tarrant County, what it would take to move them, and whether contract or direct hire gets you there first.
Start a Fort Worth IT Search →