For Maryland Customer roles, the customer requires postings to read “TS/SCI with Polygraph” — not “Full Scope Polygraph.” Full Scope is a Langley Customer-honored standard; Maryland does not honor it for postings.

A posting that advertises “Full Scope” for Maryland work signals the employer doesn't know the market, and it can screen out qualified candidates whose polygraph the customer would actually accept.

Not automatically. A candidate holding a Langley Customer Full Scope is not cleared for Maryland Customer work without re-investigation — unless they also hold current or within-two-year access at the Maryland Customer, in which case the existing polygraph can carry, because the Maryland Customer is the gating party.

The acronym being identical doesn't make the access portable.

Some customers have policies that prohibit contractors from listing the polygraph level on a public posting, even when it's a hard requirement. The requirement still exists — it just can't be printed. That's one reason cleared candidates can't always tell from the posting alone whether they qualify.

The Maryland Procurement Office requires lifestyle polygraphs to be conducted by an MPO-sponsored polygrapher. A polygraph administered elsewhere may satisfy that agency, but Maryland treats its own polygraph as the gating credential for its access.

Some customer-required accesses mandate that a polygraph has been completed within the last seven years — and in some cases within the last five. If your most recent CI polygraph falls outside that window, you may need a new one before you can be brought into access, even if nothing else about your clearance has changed.

CCA stands for Conditional Certification of Access. It's a limited certification that lets an individual begin performing work for the customer on a conditional basis — typically while a step like the customer's own polygraph is still pending.

A reinstatement candidate has a current SSBI/T5 (Top Secret investigation) and an adjudicated MPO polygraph, and is either currently in access with the Maryland Customer or was debriefed from that access less than a year ago. It's the cleanest path back into access — the clearance and polygraph are already in place.

Same foundation as a standard reinstatement — a current SSBI/T5 and an adjudicated MPO polygraph — but the candidate was debriefed from Maryland Customer access more than 12 months ago and less than 24.

The added step is a full SF-86 on top of the regular reinstatement forms. Processing times track a standard reinstatement.

This applies to a reinstatement candidate who holds an MPO CI polygraph but the role requires a full-scope polygraph. The candidate may be granted access up front on the condition that they take and pass the polygraph once they're in access, as long as no issues surface.

This path applies when a candidate has a current SSBI/T5 and an adjudicated polygraph (CI or full scope) from another agency, is currently in access there or was debriefed no more than two years ago, and the polygraph is current within the last seven years.

The candidate may be granted access up front on the condition that they take and pass the MPO polygraph once in access, assuming no issues surface.

A single-track candidate has Top Secret eligibility from a current background investigation (SSBI/T5/SBPR/T5R) but no SCI access within the last 24 months.

Even a prior polygraph is treated as null and void once SCI access has lapsed past 24 months — so the candidate runs a single track to re-establish access.

Dual track applies when a candidate has no current Top Secret investigation (within the last seven years) and no SCI eligibility with polygraph — either they've never held a clearance, or they've been out of clearance and access for more than 24 months.

The Maryland Customer has authority to run the background investigation on a “Fast Track.” Note: a prior polygraph is treated as null and void once SCI access has lapsed past 24 months.

For Maryland Customer work, the practical window is 24 months. A clearance can typically be reinstated if you've been out of access less than two years; past that, you've effectively lost your clearance for these roles without re-investigation.

We surface this on candidate match badges as “aged out (over 2 years).”

“In access” means you currently hold active SCI access on a program. “Out of access” means that access has been removed (debriefed), even if your underlying clearance eligibility is intact.

The distinction matters because the two-year clock starts when you go out of access — not when your investigation expires.

Per DCSA's published timeliness reporting, the average Top Secret investigation runs roughly 90 to 180 days, down from a peak near 411 days during the 2018 OPM backlog.

The polygraph and SCI-access steps that follow can add months on top, and the lived timeline in the Fort Meade submarket often runs longer than the published national average.

Continuous Vetting (CV) replaced the old every-five-years periodic reinvestigation under Trusted Workforce 2.0. Instead of a scheduled re-check, the sponsoring agency monitors security-relevant signals on an ongoing basis.

In practice, a person enrolled in CV no longer “comes up” for reinvestigation the old way.

We track the underlying Full Scope requirement internally for matching, but we rewrite the public label to “TS/SCI w/ Poly” on every Maryland Customer posting.

That's the language the Maryland Customer requires, and it keeps employers from advertising “Full Scope” for Maryland work — which is both out of step with the customer's explicit direction and bad for industry operational security (OpSec).

Matching runs on the cleared work history you enter — your highest clearance, your polygraph type and currency, and your Maryland Customer access status. We apply the same rules the market actually uses: clearance tier, polygraph currency, Full Scope transferability, and the two-year access rule.

You see what we concluded and why — no black box.

When an employer doesn't post a salary, we estimate a range from comparable cleared roles already on the platform — same clearance tier, similar experience — and label it “est.”

It's never a posted number and never represented as one; it's a directional read drawn only from real postings, not invented.

The jobs page filters on what cleared candidates actually screen by — clearance level (including the poly tiers), work arrangement, salary, and location. Filters stack, so you can narrow to, say, TS/SCI w/ Poly roles near Fort Meade with a posted salary in one pass.

National cleared-job boards average their numbers across the whole country — NoVA, Maryland, APG, and the rest — and the Maryland Customer's contractor submarket doesn't average cleanly with any of them.

The polygraph standards, the customer's posting rules, and the local supply of in-access engineers are specific to Fort Meade. Treating Maryland as a slice of the national number is the most common way the data gets it wrong.

From the postings themselves. Our salary figures trace to what employers actually published, or to estimates drawn from comparable real postings — never interpolated, averaged across mismatched markets, or invented.

When a posting is silent on pay, we say so rather than guess.

The SCIF Tax is the extra compensation that pays for the lifestyle constraints of cleared work — badging in and out of a secure facility, no remote option, restricted personal electronics, the geographic anchor to Fort Meade, and not being able to discuss what you do.

It sits on top of the Clearance Premium (the raw cleared-vs-uncleared delta) and is a big reason Maryland cleared comp runs above the published national numbers.

Not in the current product. The work history you enter drives your own eligibility matching and salary context — it isn't exposed to employers or recruiters. Any future feature that would change that would be opt-in, off by default.

Submit a request on our privacy-request page — access, correction, or deletion — and we'll act on verified requests. Our Privacy Notice spells out how requests are handled and the timeframe we work to. If anything's unclear, the Privacy Notice is the source of truth.

Effective October 1, 2024, the Maryland Wage Range Transparency Act requires postings for work performed at least partly in Maryland to include a wage range and a general benefits description.

If you're hiring for Fort Meade-area work, your posting needs both. We build to this standard so compliant postings are the default on the platform.

Because the Maryland Customer requires it, and because “Full Scope” signals to experienced cleared recruiters that you don't know the market. Worse, it screens out qualified candidates whose polygraph the customer would actually accept.

We rewrite the public label to “TS/SCI w/ Poly” automatically, but getting it right in your own copy matters.

It's our monthly market-intelligence report for people hiring in the Fort Meade submarket — hiring velocity, hard-to-fill signal, role-mix shifts, and salary data points by experience band, all built from real postings across the Maryland Customer contractor market.

It's built for recruiters working this market specifically, not generic business-development intel.