How do you hire a Chief Systems Engineer with an active Top Secret clearance when your own recruiters have already called everyone in the state? BAE Systems faced that question at its site in New Hampshire, where two Chief Systems Engineer seats stayed open after the company’s internal recruiters had contacted every cleared systems engineer within reach. A Top Secret clearance cannot be fast-tracked, so the search had to find engineers who already held one and give them a reason to move.
Both roles were filled, and within a year one of the two hires was promoted to Director. Natalia Rostova and her team searched the whole country for engineers who already held the clearance and lived in expensive states, where a New Hampshire salary buys a different life. The case study describes how the map was drawn and what persuaded two cleared engineers to relocate.
We now run searches for cleared aerospace and defense engineers from Singapore, worldwide, alongside our searches for AI researchers and university faculty. A defense team with a cleared role it cannot fill can write to natalia@axetalent.com.