Blackfyre Talent · GovCon Recruiting

We Hire the People
Who Win Federal Work —
and the People Who Build It.

Two practices, one advantage: eighteen years inside seven federal agencies as a Contracting Officer and Contracting Specialist. We evaluated these people's work from the government's side of the table — the capture managers, the proposal teams, and the engineers whose labor categories we had to approve.

7
Federal Agencies Worked
18
Years in Federal Acquisition
$1B+
Contracts Personally Awarded
70+
GovCon Firms Advised
Two Practices

Which Side Are
You Hiring For?

Practice One
GovCon Growth
Leadership

Business development, capture, and proposal executives. The people whose job is to win federal work — evaluated by someone who spent eighteen years reading their submissions and sitting across from them in negotiations.

See growth roles →
Practice Two
AI & Technical
Talent

Cleared machine learning, data, and cloud engineers for federal programs. Sourced by someone with a Harvard master's in IT who also knows whether your contract will actually pay for them.

See technical roles →
Practice One · Growth Leadership

I Sat Across the Table
From These People
for Eighteen Years.

Every business development lead, capture manager, and proposal team trying to win federal work eventually ends up in front of a Contracting Officer. For eighteen years, that was me. I read their technical volumes. I sat through their orals. I ran the negotiations and I wrote the evaluations.

Most recruiters screen a capture manager on a self-reported win rate, from pursuits nobody outside the company can verify. I evaluated the actual work product — from the side that decided whether it won.

The best capture manager for your next pursuit is usually someone else's capture manager right now.

The genuinely good ones are employed, performing, and nowhere near a job board. They don't apply — they get called. I know which ones they are because I watched them work, and I know the difference between a proposal that won because it was strong and one that won because the competition was weak.

What I Actually Screen For
Do they understand the evaluation?

Most people write to the requirement. The good ones write to the evaluation criteria and the scoring sheet the CO is actually holding.

Can they qualify out?

A capture manager who bids everything is expensive. The valuable ones kill bad pursuits early and put the B&P money somewhere it can win.

Are the relationships real?

"I know people at that agency" is easy to claim. I know what an actual working relationship with a program office looks like versus a conference handshake.

Is the win record theirs?

Plenty of people list wins they were adjacent to. I can usually tell from how they describe the pursuit whether they ran it or watched it.

Growth Roles We Fill
Business Development & Capture
  • VP / Director of Business Development
  • Capture Managers & Capture Directors
  • Growth & Strategy Executives
  • Agency Account & Portfolio Leads
Proposal & Pricing
  • Proposal Managers & Directors
  • Technical & Past Performance Writers
  • Volume Leads & Proposal Coordinators
  • Pricing & Cost Volume Analysts
Practice Two · AI & Technical

Cleared AI Talent,
Vetted by Someone
Who's Read the Contract.

Federal AI work concentrates at agencies I worked inside — Energy's national labs, HHS and its health data programs, DoD. I hold a Harvard master's in IT, so the technical assessment isn't outsourced to a keyword match.

And because I built labor categories and rate structures from the government side, I can tell you something no technical recruiter can: whether your contract will actually pay for the person you want to hire.

Machine Learning & Data
  • ML & AI Engineers — model development in accredited environments
  • Data Scientists — federal health, energy, and defense analytics
  • MLOps Engineers — pipelines that survive an ATO review
  • NLP & Computer Vision — document, imagery, and sensor programs
Cloud, Platform & Security
  • Cloud Architects — AWS GovCloud, Azure Government, IL4/IL5
  • DevSecOps Engineers — pipelines built for federal accreditation
  • Data Engineers — pipelines, warehousing, and governance
  • FedRAMP & ATO Specialists — the people who get you authorized
We Source Across Every Clearance Tier

Clearance is the gating variable in federal hiring, and it's the one a generalist recruiter treats as a checkbox. We verify status and currency before a candidate reaches your inbox — an expired clearance is a wasted interview loop.

Public Trust Secret Top Secret TS/SCI TS/SCI with Polygraph
Across Both Practices

Anyone Can Send
You a Résumé.

The questions that actually matter are whether the person can be billed compliantly on the vehicle funding the role, and whether they're legally allowed to work the account at all. Those are contracts questions wearing a recruiting costume.

We Can Read the Work

Eighteen years inside GSA, IRS, DoD, DOI, HHS, FTC, and Energy — plus a Harvard master's in IT. We know what a GS-14 actually did versus what the résumé claims, and we evaluated these proposals from the side that scored them.

We Map to a Labor Category

Before you make an offer, we tell you which labor category the candidate maps to, whether the rate is defensible, and whether your contract will pay for them. We build LCATs and rate structures for GSA Schedules every week.

We Screen the Cooling-Off Rules

Post-government-employment restrictions under 18 U.S.C. 207 govern what a freshly departed fed can legally touch. Most hiring managers don't know those rules. We check before an offer goes out, not after.

Services & Pricing

Three Ways to Work
With Us

Same pricing across both practices. Pick the model that matches how much hiring you're actually doing.

Most Flexible
Contingency
20–25%
of first-year salary, per hire
No upfront cost
Pay only on a hire
Clearance verification included
LCAT and rate mapping included
Best for one to four hires
Best Value at Volume
Embedded Recruiting
Monthly
flat retainer, unlimited hires
Unlimited placements
We act as your recruiting function
Pipeline built ahead of award
Six-month minimum engagement
Best for staffing up after an award
Senior & Cleared
Retained Search
Retainer
plus success fee on placement
Majority of fee due on success
BD, capture, and executive roles
Post-employment restriction screening
Best for executives and senior hires
How It Works

What Working With
Us Looks Like

1
Send us the role

The position, the clearance requirement, the contract or vehicle it's funded under. We come back within 24 hours with a specific proposal — including an honest read on whether the role is fillable at the rate you have.

2
We check the contract math first

Before sourcing starts, we confirm the labor category, the rate, and the clearance requirement line up. This is the step that saves you from interviewing four people you can't afford to hire.

3
Candidates arrive pre-screened

Clearance verified and current, technical or capture background assessed, post-employment restrictions checked. Résumés arrive formatted for the way federal evaluators actually read them.

4
You interview, we coordinate

Scheduling, candidate communication, and keeping good people warm through a federal hiring cycle that is almost always slower than the candidate expects.

5
Offer, onboard, and stay compliant

We support the offer, confirm nothing in the candidate's background creates a contract problem, and stay available through the start date.

Common Questions

Before You Ask

Do you recruit out of your own consulting clients?+
Never. Every company Blackfyre advises is permanently off-limits as a candidate source, and that's written into our agreement — not left to good intentions. If we advise you on your GSA Schedule, your people are not in our pipeline.
How do you actually assess a capture or proposal person?+
By the standard a Contracting Officer uses. Whether they write to the evaluation criteria or just to the requirement, whether they can qualify out of a bad pursuit, whether their agency relationships are real working relationships, and whether the wins on their résumé were theirs to claim. Eighteen years of reading proposals from the government side gives you a fairly reliable filter.
What does the post-employment screening check?+
Restrictions under 18 U.S.C. 207 limit what a former federal employee can work on after leaving government — sometimes permanently, sometimes for one or two years, depending on their role and what they touched. We flag those constraints before an offer goes out so you don't hire someone who legally can't work the account you hired them for. This is a screening flag, not a legal opinion; your counsel makes the final call.
How fast do you fill a role?+
We won't quote you a number we haven't earned. Cleared technical roles move slower than commercial ones, and anyone promising a fixed timeline on a TS/SCI search is guessing. What we will do is give you an honest feasibility read in the first 24 hours — including telling you when a role isn't fillable at the rate you're offering.
Do you work with small businesses or only large primes?+
Both. Blackfyre has advised 70+ GovCon firms from first-time 8(a) holders to established primes. A small business making its first capture hire or first cleared technical hire is exactly the situation where getting it right matters most.
Before You Hire

What I'd Read First

If you're doing this yourself, everything I know about hiring these roles is written down and free. Start with the guide.

Complete guide Hiring GovCon Growth Talent: Capture, BD, and Proposal Roles Which role you actually need, when to hire, what to ask, and how to verify the claims. Start here Capture vs. BD vs. Proposal Manager: Who Does What Most companies hire the wrong one. Diagnose from how your bids actually fail. Interviewing 12 Capture Interview Questions From the CO's Seat Questions that test decisions, not outcomes — because outcomes are easy to claim. Diligence Verify a Candidate's Claimed Wins in 20 Minutes Every federal award is public. Almost nobody checks. Here's the method.
Start a Search

Tell Us the Role.
We'll Tell You If It's Fillable.

Send the position, the clearance requirement, and the vehicle it's funded under. You'll get an honest read within 24 hours — including when the answer is no.

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