How to Apply to CACI International Inc

About CACI International Inc

CACI International Inc. is a publicly traded, pure-play government services and technology contractor headquartered at 12021 Sunset Hills Road in Reston, Virginia. Founded in 1962 as California Analysis Center, Incorporated, the company has grown into one of the largest Beltway-bandit firms in the national security ecosystem, reporting roughly $7.6 billion in annual revenue and employing approximately 23,000 people. The bulk of that workforce holds active U.S. government security clearances, a feature that shapes nearly every aspect of CACI's hiring and retention strategy. Chief Executive Officer John Mengucci has led the company since 2019, following a career that included senior roles at Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, and under his tenure CACI has leaned deeper into mission software, signals intelligence, cyber, photonics, and expeditionary capabilities rather than the traditional staff-augmentation body-shop model that once defined the GovCon sector. If you are looking for commercial clients or consumer products, this is not the company for you. CACI sells almost exclusively to the U.S. federal government and to allied intelligence partners, and its customer roster reads like a who's-who of American national security: the Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Marine Corps, along with the CIA, NSA, DIA, NRO, NGA, and the Department of State. A smaller but strategically important slice of revenue comes from the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and civilian agencies such as the FAA and Treasury, but the center of gravity sits firmly inside the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community. Operationally, CACI organizes its work around two reporting segments. The Domestic Operations segment, which accounts for the majority of revenue, covers enterprise IT modernization, software development, data analytics, cyber, and mission systems for U.S. federal customers. The International Operations segment serves NATO allies and coalition partners, primarily in the United Kingdom and continental Europe, often through subsidiaries that retain their own local branding. Within Domestic Operations, CACI frequently organizes program delivery around three capability clusters that candidates will see repeated across job postings: Enterprise IT (helpdesk, infrastructure, cloud migration, ITSM, ServiceNow, Microsoft stack, zero-trust architectures), Mission Systems (SIGINT platforms, cyber offensive and defensive operations, electronic warfare, photonics and free-space optical communications, counter-UAS, and geospatial intelligence), and Expeditionary Mission Support (linguists, intelligence analysts, training and simulation, and logistics for forward-deployed military units). The 2024 acquisition of Karta Technologies expanded CACI's footprint in Air Force modernization and digital engineering, part of a consistent strategy of bolt-on acquisitions to buy into new contract vehicles rather than competing for them from scratch. A broader acquisition spree over the past five years has added capabilities in secure communications, electro-optical sensors, and agile software factories, giving CACI a portfolio that now straddles the line between a traditional services integrator and a product-oriented defense technology firm. For job seekers, the practical implication is that CACI roles fall into two very different flavors. The first is classic services work: sitting on a contract at a customer site, performing a defined scope of work for a named program office, with promotion tied to both your performance and the trajectory of that specific contract. The second is product and platform work, often performed at CACI-owned facilities in Sterling, Virginia, Florham Park, New Jersey, Austin, Texas, or Shalimar, Florida, where engineers build repeatable capabilities that are sold across multiple customers. The recent political shift toward the Trump administration's procurement priorities has reshaped parts of the pipeline: IT modernization, AI-enabled decision support, and counter-adversary cyber have accelerated, while some legacy staff-augmentation lines have compressed. CACI is widely considered one of the more stable employers in GovCon, carries an investment-grade balance sheet, and runs a generous equity and retirement program, but candidates should understand that compensation is bounded by federal contract rate caps rather than by the market dynamics of Silicon Valley.

Application Process

1
Start at https://www
Start at https://www.caci.com/careers/ to understand the business segments and capability clusters, then follow the Search Jobs link which routes to the live applicant tracking system at https://caci.eightfold.ai/careers. Every official job posting lives in that Eightfold instance, and any CACI opportunity you find on LinkedIn, ClearanceJobs, Indeed, or a third-party aggregator will ultimately bounce you to the same URL to complete the formal application.
2
Confirm your eligibility before investing time in the form
Confirm your eligibility before investing time in the form. The vast majority of CACI roles require U.S. citizenship, an active or reinstatable U.S. government security clearance, and in many cases a specific counterintelligence or full-scope polygraph. If a posting says TS/SCI with CI Poly, do not apply unless you either currently hold that clearance or have held it within the last 24 months. Applying without the required clearance wastes your time and the recruiter's, and CACI's Eightfold instance will flag the mismatch automatically.
3
Create an Eightfold candidate profile and upload a single clean PDF resume
Create an Eightfold candidate profile and upload a single clean PDF resume. Eightfold's Talent Intelligence engine parses your resume into a structured profile and then matches you against every open requisition, so a well-structured resume pays dividends across dozens of potential roles. Avoid uploading a DOCX with tracked changes, embedded images, tables inside tables, or custom fonts, as these break the parser and downgrade your match score.
4
Search by clearance level, capability area, and location rather than by job titl
Search by clearance level, capability area, and location rather than by job title. Titles at CACI are often contract-driven and opaque (Systems Engineer 3, Sr Intel Analyst, Program Manager, Journeyman Software Developer), so filtering on TS/SCI, Fort Meade, and Cyber will surface more relevant openings than searching for a specific commercial-style title.
5
Submit the application and complete the voluntary self-identification and vetera
Submit the application and complete the voluntary self-identification and veterans preference sections. CACI is a federal contractor subject to OFCCP reporting, so these fields are legally required to be offered but are not used to screen candidates. Veterans should complete the veteran status section honestly, as CACI actively recruits separating service members and many programs have explicit preference language for prior military.
6
Expect a recruiter screen within one to three weeks for high-priority clearance-
Expect a recruiter screen within one to three weeks for high-priority clearance-matched roles, and within two to six weeks for other openings. The first call is typically a 20 to 30 minute conversation covering your clearance status, polygraph history, availability to start, expected compensation, and willingness to relocate or commute to a specific customer site. Be ready with exact dates for your last clearance adjudication and your most recent polygraph, as recruiters will ask.
7
Proceed to the hiring manager interview, which is almost always a technical or d
Proceed to the hiring manager interview, which is almost always a technical or domain deep dive. For engineering roles, expect architecture discussions, scenario problems, and occasional coding; for intelligence analyst roles, expect a tradecraft conversation and sometimes a written exercise; for program management roles, expect earned-value and contract-vehicle questions. Many interviews are conducted virtually, but final rounds for cleared positions often require an in-person meeting in a SCIF, which means no phones, no laptops, and no notes can be carried in.
8
If you receive a verbal offer, CACI will issue a written offer contingent on a s
If you receive a verbal offer, CACI will issue a written offer contingent on a successful background investigation, drug screen, and clearance crossover or new submission. For candidates already holding the required clearance at the required level, the full cycle from application to start date typically runs four to eight weeks. For candidates who need a new clearance submitted through DCSA, expect six to eighteen months, sometimes longer for full-scope polygraph positions. CACI will occasionally carry cleared candidates on an uncleared bench during long adjudications, but this is the exception rather than the rule.
9
Complete onboarding through Workday, which CACI uses for HR and payroll even tho
Complete onboarding through Workday, which CACI uses for HR and payroll even though Eightfold owns recruiting. You will be asked to complete Form I-9 verification, direct deposit setup, benefits enrollment, and mandatory ethics and insider-threat training before your first day on contract.

Resume Tips for CACI International Inc

recommended

Lead the resume header with your clearance status in a precise, standardized for

Lead the resume header with your clearance status in a precise, standardized format: TS/SCI with CI Polygraph, adjudicated [month/year], active. Recruiters at CACI and across GovCon scan for this line first, and its absence or ambiguity will sink otherwise strong applications. If your clearance has lapsed, write inactive TS/SCI, held through [month/year], reinstatable so the recruiter knows crossover is still viable.

recommended

Translate military experience into civilian-parseable language while preserving

Translate military experience into civilian-parseable language while preserving the MOS, AFSC, or NEC code. Write Intelligence Analyst, U.S. Army (MOS 35F), then describe the work in terms a non-military recruiter can understand. CACI hires thousands of veterans and the Eightfold parser recognizes many MOS codes directly, but a hiring manager outside the intel community may not know what a 35F does unless you spell it out.

recommended

Name the customer and the program when possible and when not prohibited by your

Name the customer and the program when possible and when not prohibited by your NDA. Lines like Supported NSA Directorate of Operations on Program XYZ or Delivered software for U.S. Army INSCOM under Contract ABC carry enormous weight inside CACI, because hiring managers are often staffing adjacent contracts and recognize the exact program offices you worked on. When you cannot name the program, use generic but accurate language such as supported a national-level SIGINT customer rather than fabricating detail.

recommended

Lead bullet points with impact, not tools

Lead bullet points with impact, not tools. Eightfold will extract skill keywords automatically, so you do not need to keyword-stuff. Instead write Reduced mean time to detect for adversary lateral movement from 42 to 11 minutes across a 15,000-endpoint enterprise, then let the parser pick up Splunk, CrowdStrike, and MITRE ATT&CK from the technology line underneath.

recommended

Quantify contract-relevant outcomes

Quantify contract-relevant outcomes. Inside CACI, success is measured in award fee, on-time delivery, and retained contract value. Bullets like Earned 98 percent award fee across three consecutive performance periods or Led recompete capture that retained $140M contract ceiling speak directly to what promotion committees evaluate.

recommended

Call out specific certifications required by DoD 8570 and DoD 8140

Call out specific certifications required by DoD 8570 and DoD 8140. CISSP, Security+, CCNA, CEH, GCIH, GCFA, and cloud certifications from AWS, Azure, and Google are often the difference between being billable on day one and being shelved. List the cert, the credential number if appropriate, and the expiration date so the recruiter can confirm compliance without chasing you.

recommended

For software and cyber roles, list programming languages and frameworks in order

For software and cyber roles, list programming languages and frameworks in order of genuine fluency, not recency. CACI engineering interviews are blunt, and an inflated Python claim will collapse under a live coding exercise. Add a Development Tools section covering Git, Jira, Confluence, and your IaC stack (Terraform, Ansible), since classified networks still rely heavily on these tools.

recommended

Keep the resume to two pages for individual contributors and three pages for sen

Keep the resume to two pages for individual contributors and three pages for senior program managers or principal engineers. CACI recruiters and hiring managers are comfortable with longer resumes than commercial companies because cleared work often cannot be compressed, but gratuitous length dilutes signal.

recommended

Avoid graphics, columns, icons, and photos

Avoid graphics, columns, icons, and photos. Eightfold parses reasonably well, but CACI's downstream workflow also pushes resumes into Workday and occasionally into customer-provided systems that do not handle modern layouts. A clean single-column PDF with standard section headings (Clearance, Summary, Experience, Education, Certifications, Skills) is the safest format.

recommended

Include a brief Clearance and Eligibility footer confirming U

Include a brief Clearance and Eligibility footer confirming U.S. citizenship, willingness to submit to polygraph or re-polygraph, and relocation preferences. This answers the first three questions every recruiter will otherwise ask on the phone and accelerates the pipeline.

ATS System: Eightfold AI (Talent Intelligence Platform) at caci.eightfold.ai

CACI operates its recruiting pipeline on Eightfold AI, an enterprise applicant tracking and talent intelligence platform hosted at caci.eightfold.ai/careers. Eightfold is not a traditional keyword-matching ATS; it uses a machine-learning model trained on millions of career trajectories to infer candidate skills from resume content, work history, and public profile signals, then matches candidates against open requisitions across the entire CACI portfolio rather than against a single job at a time. CACI's instance is a PCSX-protected Eightfold tenant, meaning the public job search pages use Eightfold's newer personalized candidate experience with server-rendered match scores and job recommendations. Practically, this has three consequences for applicants. First, a strong profile surfaces across many roles automatically, so investing an extra 30 minutes polishing the uploaded resume and the Eightfold skills inventory pays back across dozens of applications. Second, the system uses semantic similarity rather than exact keyword matching, so a resume that says led incident response for a high-side enterprise will still match against a posting asking for cyber defense operations experience. Third, Eightfold's match score is visible to recruiters, and low-scoring applications are often batched and reviewed only after high-scoring candidates have been triaged, so truly unqualified applications are not so much rejected as deprioritized.

Complete the full Eightfold profile, not just the resume upload. Fill in the structured skills inventory, years of experience per skill, and clearance fields. The platform uses these fields to compute match scores, and leaving them blank means the algorithm has to infer everything from resume text, which produces weaker matches.
Upload a machine-parseable PDF generated from a text-based source such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Scanned PDFs, image-based resumes, and heavily designed templates produce poor parse results and will silently undercut your match score across every requisition.
Use standard section headings exactly as they appear on most resumes: Experience, Education, Skills, Certifications, Clearance. Eightfold's parser recognizes these headings and maps content into the correct profile fields. Creative headings like My Journey or What I Bring confuse the parser.
Add specific cleared-program keywords and acronyms in context rather than in a standalone buzzword list. Mentioning JWICS, SIPRNet, Palantir, MASINT, or specific DoD contract vehicles inside a bullet point teaches Eightfold that you have hands-on experience, while the same terms in a skills list carry less weight.
Set job alerts and save searches inside the candidate portal. CACI posts hundreds of requisitions per month, many with identical titles attached to different contracts, and alerts ensure you see new openings before the first wave of applications closes the pipeline.

Interview Culture

CACI interviews are polite, direct, and heavily weighted toward whether you can do the specific job on the specific contract on day one.

The company operates on tight program budgets and bills most labor by the hour to a named customer, so hiring managers are under pressure to avoid long ramp-up periods and will generally prefer a candidate who has done nearly identical work for a similar program over a more brilliant candidate who would need six months to get productive. The first round is almost always a recruiter screen focused on clearance verification, availability, compensation expectations, and basic cultural fit. Recruiters at CACI are technically literate compared with commercial recruiters but are not the final technical gatekeepers, and their job is primarily to confirm that you meet the contract's hard requirements before passing you to the hiring manager. The hiring manager interview is where the substance happens. For engineering roles, expect 45 to 90 minutes of technical discussion covering your hands-on experience with the relevant stack, a scenario question or two (how would you architect a secure data pipeline across a cross-domain solution, how would you stand up a zero-trust enclave, how would you respond to a specific class of cyber incident), and occasionally a light coding exercise. For intelligence analyst and linguist roles, expect a tradecraft conversation, discussion of your target-language proficiency if applicable, and sometimes a written analytic exercise graded against IC Directive 203 standards. For program and project management roles, expect detailed questions about earned value management, contract vehicles (GSA, OASIS, SEWP, Alliant, T4NG), award fee structures, and your experience managing subcontractors. A second round typically includes the program manager, a technical lead, and sometimes the government customer who will receive your support, and it is common for the customer to have de facto veto power over the hire even though CACI is technically the employer. Behavioral questions are present but secondary; you will be asked about a time you handled a difficult stakeholder, a time you missed a deadline, and how you handle classified information mishandling, but the bulk of the conversation is technical and program-specific. Interviews for cleared positions at customer sites or in CACI SCIFs add logistical friction: you will need to arrive early, surrender phones and electronics to a security desk, and often walk through a classified facility escorted. Dress is business casual for most technical interviews and business formal for senior program roles and customer-facing positions. The timeline from first application to offer varies widely based on clearance status. A fully cleared candidate moving inside the IC can sometimes receive an offer within two to three weeks. An uncleared candidate who needs a fresh TS/SCI adjudication can wait six to eighteen months, during which CACI maintains intermittent contact but rarely pays a retainer. Polygraph-required roles add additional delay because the polygraph appointment is scheduled by the government customer, not CACI. Compensation offers are generally fair relative to GovCon benchmarks but capped by contract rate structures, meaning a senior software engineer at CACI will earn less in base salary than the equivalent role at a FAANG company. Total compensation is improved by a strong 401(k) match, an employee stock purchase plan, a defined-contribution retirement plan, generous paid time off that accrues faster with tenure, and in many cases signing bonuses for candidates bringing in high-demand clearances.

What CACI International Inc Looks For

An active U.S. government security clearance at the level required by the specific contract, verifiable through the Defense Information System for Security (DISS) and with documented polygraph dates where applicable.
U.S. citizenship, which is a hard gate for the overwhelming majority of positions. Lawful permanent residents and visa holders are eligible for only a narrow slice of commercial-facing or internal corporate roles.
Hands-on experience on the specific contract vehicle, customer, or mission system referenced in the posting, or demonstrable experience on a directly adjacent program that would require minimal ramp-up.
Technical depth in the named stack, whether that is RF and SIGINT hardware, cyber tooling such as Splunk, Elastic, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Cortex, and Tenable, cloud platforms including AWS GovCloud, Azure Government, and IL5 and IL6 environments, or software development in languages like Python, Java, C++, and Go.
Relevant DoD 8570 and DoD 8140 compliant certifications for IA workforce positions, including Security+, CISSP, CCSP, CEH, GCIH, GCFA, and cloud-specific credentials where the program requires them.
Veteran status and MOS alignment for roles that support operational commands, where prior military experience in the exact mission area is frequently preferred over equivalent civilian experience.
Clean background check, credit history compatible with clearance adjudication, and an absence of disqualifying factors such as recent drug use or foreign contacts that would complicate reinvestigation.
Cultural alignment with a mission-first, customer-service-oriented environment where individual heroics are less valued than reliability, discretion, and predictable delivery on schedule and within contract scope.
Willingness to relocate or commute to a specific customer site, often for the duration of the contract, including locations at Fort Meade, Fort Belvoir, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Aberdeen Proving Ground, and numerous smaller installations across the continental United States and occasionally overseas.
For leadership roles, demonstrated experience growing contracts through recompete capture, organic task order expansion, and relationship management with government program offices and contracting officers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a security clearance to work at CACI International?

For the overwhelming majority of roles, yes. CACI's business is built on cleared federal contracts, and the company estimates that roughly 80 percent of its workforce holds active U.S. government clearances. A smaller set of corporate functions, commercial-facing roles, and certain engineering positions at company-owned facilities do not require a clearance, but these are the exception. If a posting does not explicitly state No clearance required, assume a clearance is needed.

Can non-U.S. citizens apply for jobs at CACI?

CACI's core contracts require U.S. citizenship for clearance eligibility, so most roles are closed to non-citizens. Lawful permanent residents and visa holders may be eligible for a narrow set of corporate positions such as commercial software engineering, corporate finance, marketing, and some legal roles, and CACI's international subsidiaries in the United Kingdom and Europe have separate hiring channels for local nationals. Review the specific posting carefully, and do not rely on commercial work-authorization sponsorship patterns because they generally do not apply here.

What applicant tracking system does CACI use and how should I apply?

CACI uses Eightfold AI, hosted at caci.eightfold.ai/careers. Every official job posting is listed there, and applications submitted through LinkedIn Easy Apply or other aggregators will ultimately redirect you to the same Eightfold portal to complete the formal application. Create a complete Eightfold candidate profile, upload a clean text-based PDF resume, and fill in the structured skills, clearance, and experience fields to maximize your match score across requisitions.

How long does it take to get hired at CACI?

For a fully cleared candidate matched to a high-priority requisition, the full cycle from application to start date typically runs four to eight weeks. For candidates who need a new clearance submitted through DCSA, expect six to eighteen months, sometimes longer for full-scope polygraph positions. Polygraph-required roles schedule the polygraph through the government customer rather than CACI, which adds variability outside the company's control.

Does CACI hire a lot of veterans?

Yes, veterans are one of CACI's largest talent pipelines, particularly for intelligence analyst, linguist, cyber, logistics, and training roles that map directly to military occupational specialties. Many program teams explicitly prefer candidates with prior service in the specific mission area, and CACI participates in SkillBridge, the Hiring Our Heroes program, and targeted transitioning-service-member recruiting events. Translating your MOS into civilian-parseable language while preserving the code is the strongest single move a transitioning veteran can make on a CACI resume.

What kinds of engineering work does CACI do?

CACI's engineering portfolio spans enterprise IT modernization (cloud migration to AWS GovCloud and Azure Government, zero-trust architectures, ServiceNow and Microsoft stack deployments), mission systems (SIGINT signal processing, cyber offensive and defensive tooling, electronic warfare, photonics and free-space optical communications, counter-UAS), and software development for intelligence and defense platforms. The company also runs internal product lines in secure communications, geospatial intelligence, and electro-optical sensing through subsidiaries acquired over the past five years, including the 2024 acquisition of Karta Technologies.

What is compensation like at CACI compared with commercial tech companies?

Base salary at CACI is typically lower than at FAANG-class commercial technology companies because federal contract rates cap what the company can bill, and labor costs must fit inside those caps. However, total compensation is competitive within the GovCon sector. CACI offers a strong 401(k) with company match, an employee stock purchase plan, a defined-contribution retirement plan, generous accruing paid time off, signing bonuses for candidates bringing in high-demand clearances, and clearance-driven career stability that is difficult to replicate in the commercial sector.

Can I work remotely at CACI?

Remote work at CACI is heavily constrained by contract and clearance requirements. Roles that support classified customers must be performed on SIPRNet, JWICS, or other high-side networks, which almost always means working onsite at a government facility or CACI SCIF. Some unclassified roles, particularly in corporate functions, commercial software engineering, and certain program management positions, offer hybrid or fully remote arrangements. Always confirm the work location with the recruiter because the posting may list a headquarters city when the actual work is performed at a customer site.

What is the interview process like at CACI?

After a recruiter screen focused on clearance and availability, you will typically have a technical or domain-focused interview with the hiring manager, followed by a second round with the program manager, a technical lead, and occasionally the government customer. Interviews are direct, contract-specific, and weighted toward whether you can perform the exact scope of work on day one. Expect scenario questions, occasional coding for engineering roles, tradecraft conversations for analyst roles, and earned-value and contract-vehicle questions for program managers.

Does CACI sponsor clearances for uncleared candidates?

CACI does sponsor clearances for select uncleared candidates on specific programs, but this is not the default path. Sponsorship is more common for hard-to-fill technical roles, for transitioning veterans with strong operational experience, and for candidates in specialized language or mission areas where the talent pool is small. For most openings, the hiring manager will prefer an already-cleared candidate because bench costs are real and contract start dates are fixed.

How to Apply to CACI International Inc

Key Takeaways

About CACI International Inc

Application Process

Resume Tips for CACI International Inc

Lead the resume header with your clearance status in a precise, standardized for

Translate military experience into civilian-parseable language while preserving

Name the customer and the program when possible and when not prohibited by your

Lead bullet points with impact, not tools

Quantify contract-relevant outcomes

Call out specific certifications required by DoD 8570 and DoD 8140

For software and cyber roles, list programming languages and frameworks in order

Keep the resume to two pages for individual contributors and three pages for sen

Avoid graphics, columns, icons, and photos

Include a brief Clearance and Eligibility footer confirming U

ATS System: Eightfold AI (Talent Intelligence Platform) at caci.eightfold.ai

Interview Culture

What CACI International Inc Looks For

Frequently Asked Questions

Open Positions

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