Rocio Bauer’s profile over at WashingtonExec is worth your time if you’re building or leading technology teams in the defense sector. Her path—from Army service to senior technology leadership—illustrates something I see consistently in the best hires: operators who’ve carried a pager, worn the uniform, or sat in the TOC bring a different quality of judgment when they move into product, engineering, or program leadership roles.
That combination of mission context and technical chops is exactly what makes a passive candidate worth pursuing in a retained search. You can teach someone AWS or zero trust architecture. You can’t teach someone why latency matters downrange, or how to build for users who don’t get to file a ticket and wait. When I’m mapping the market for a client, I’m looking for people who’ve done both—and who can translate between the two without losing either audience.
If you’re a technologist with clearance and a service background, you’re more marketable than you think. If you’re hiring one, expect to move fast. That profile doesn’t stay on the market long.