A commercial software engineer and a defense program engineer can hold the same degree, write similar code, and solve problems of equal technical difficulty. But when Margarita Howard is hiring for HX5, her roughly 1,000-employee contractor supporting NASA and the Department of Defense, they are not the same candidate.
“Experience in their respective fields, while supporting these agencies’ respective programs and missions, is very different from experience gained from working in the commercial world,” Howard said.
The distinction points to something that shapes not just how HX5 recruits and retains people, but how defense contracting as a profession functions. Government work is a specialized discipline. The experience gap is a consequence of that specialization.
What Makes Government Work Its Own Discipline
Margarita Howard described working alongside civil servants and the military as “a privilege,” adding: “I love this business and the work that we do. I’m extremely proud of it.”
She said her pride is connected to the mission-critical nature of the programs HX5 supports across DoD and NASA operations: research and development, engineering, test and evaluation, IT systems.
That mission-critical context also explains why federal agencies are accountable to the public in ways commercial clients are not. The Federal Acquisition Regulation governs every stage of the contracting relationship from proposal through closeout. The Defense Contract Audit Agency audits costs on reimbursable contracts. Deliverables have contractually specified formats. Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System records follow firms from program to program and influence future source selections. These frameworks exist to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent with accountability and that programs supporting national security are executed to exacting standards.
“As a government contractor being paid with taxpayer dollars, it is the government’s job to audit and review every single area of what the contractor does for them,” Howard said. She explained that HX5 invested in government-approved accounting systems from its earliest days, before it had the scale that might have made such investment feel urgent. The idea was to establish a foundation of long-term credibility.
A candidate who has spent years in commercial tech is technically capable, but hasn’t been trained in that operating environment. Earned value management systems, which track cost and schedule performance against a baseline plan and produce metrics that contracting officers monitor closely, have no direct equivalent in commercial project management frameworks. Program management fluency in government work takes time to build, regardless of how strong a candidate’s commercial track record is.
Three Overlapping Requirements
Howard describes HX5’s hardest-to-fill positions as “purple unicorns.” These are candidates who simultaneously meet three requirements that each narrow the available pool.
The first is a security clearance. Background investigations for top-secret access examine financial history, foreign contacts, criminal records, and personal conduct. Initial processing can stretch beyond a year. Because candidates can’t begin work on classified programs while investigations are pending, the timing gap alone eliminates otherwise qualified applicants who can’t wait. It’s a constraint without a commercial equivalent, and there’s no shortcut around it.
The second is technical depth. HX5’s core workforce is concentrated in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. Advanced education is expected across the board.
The Semiconductor Industry Association projects a national shortfall of approximately 1.4 million technicians, computer scientists, and engineers by 2030. Defense contractors and commercial technology firms both draw from that pool, competing across different compensation structures and work environments.
The third requirement is the government experience itself: familiarity with DoD and NASA culture, program operations, reporting requirements, and the particular rhythms of agency work. A Project Management Institute study on project managers transitioning into government programs found that even experienced professionals from the private sector required orientation to the protocols, guidelines, and documentation standards defining federal work. That orientation happens on the job, over time. It can’t be compressed into onboarding.
National Defense Magazine has reported that 82% of defense industrial base companies find it difficult to locate qualified STEM workers, and that figure captures only the technical credential constraint. The clearance requirement and the government experience requirement sit on top of it.
How HX5 Builds the Pipeline
Howard’s preference is to hire candidates who already meet all three requirements. “We prefer to hire experienced individuals, so we look for people who have worked with, or supported, NASA or the Department of Defense,” she said.
Veterans are often some of the strongest hires based on that criterion. Military service routinely confers active security clearances, technical training in STEM-adjacent fields, and direct familiarity with DoD culture and program operations, meeting all three filters at once. Roughly 30% of HX5’s workforce are veterans. The company participates in the Hiring Our Heroes Corporate Fellowship Program, hosting transitioning service members in 12-week placements before they separate from service.
The supply of pre-credentialed candidates doesn’t grow fast enough on its own, however. Defense industry employment sits at approximately 1.1 million workers today, well below its mid-1980s peak of 3.2 million, according to the National Defense Industrial Association.
That gap has pushed HX5 toward university partnerships Howard describes as an unexpected but valuable development.
“Collaborating with the universities on supporting research initiatives has helped us stay ahead of the emerging technologies, and also foster a pipeline of talented graduates that may come to work for us or contribute on a short-term basis,” said. University graduates don’t arrive as finished government contractors, but they can develop the experience side of the equation over time in an environment built to support it.
On compensation, Howard competes on mission.
“You have to get up in the morning and be excited about the particular program you’re supporting,” Howard said. “Let’s get to the moon, let’s accomplish this mission overseas.”
A Gap That Reflects the Nature of the Work
The commercial-versus-government experience divide isn’t going away, nor is it supposed to. It reflects the genuine difference between two kinds of professional environments: one shaped by market outcomes, the other by mission accountability and public trust. Those differences produce different demands, and the people best suited to government work are the ones who have learned to operate within them.
What does shift is the competitive pressure around that talent pool. Commercial technology companies, drawn by the scale of federal AI spending — the Pentagon awarded $200 million contracts each to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI in July 2025 for AI development — are moving into government work with growing confidence and will accumulate government experience of their own over time. Mid-size contractors like HX5 will compete for the same limited pool of pre-credentialed professionals those companies will also pursue.
For Howard, the answer isn’t to lower standards for what that experience means. It’s to build more pathways toward it, through veterans, through universities, through internal development, while recruiting people who are drawn to the kind of work she has spent two decades calling a privilege.
