Security Clearance Required

Help Wanted: Counterintelligence analyst, Afghanistan. Top-secret security clearance required. Minimum of four years of analytical experience with the Department of Defense required. Need strong research and writing skills. “Come on board with a company that values its employees!” Very competitive salaries and benefits, 401(k).

That’s a summary of a want ad Tampa-based Celestar has on ClearanceJobs.com, the online classifieds for work requiring top-secret security clearances. The site had 209 jobs in Florida posted in October. Job openings included technical writers, programmers and network administrators:

» One company would train a high school grad to be a biometric fingerprint tech at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa making $12.94 per hour.

» Northrop Grumman wanted a targets and operations planner for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, which runs the Afghan and Iraq wars, to evaluate military and intelligence operations.

» Contractor S4 needed someone fluent in Urdu or Pashtu to track regional blogs, update a client website and track the viral effectiveness of themes and messages.

Because active security clearances are needed for many of the jobs, former military are usually the candidates. It takes a long time to get clearance for non-veterans — too long for the job applicants to wait, says Eric Garnier of contractor Cambridge International Systems. “It’s not that difficult to find qualified professionals,” says Roger Swinford, head of intelligence contractor Calhoun International in Tampa. “We’re going on 10 years in the war on terror so you have recent and relevant experience.”