WASHINGTON — Seeking an infusion of fresh tech talent, the Pentagon and the Office of Personnel Management are launching a program they’re calling War Force to hire hundreds of “exceptional software engineers” for two-year stints in the Defense Department, the two agencies announced this morning.
War Force builds on the government-wide Tech Force program, which seeks to hire at least a thousand “elite” engineers for two-year tours with a variety of agencies, including Defense. But War Force will be dedicated solely to DoD. The hundreds of engineers it aims to hire will be in addition to Tech Force’s 1,000, a defense official clarified.
“The plan is to hire hundreds and to embed them all the way down to the unit level, in some cases,” the defense official told Breaking Defense.
The War Force program will emphasize skills in artificial intelligence and be of particular interest to the Pentagon’s Chief Digital & AI Office (CDAO). “As you could imagine, CDAO is using this initiative extensively, as many of the engineers being recruited will act on the Department’s AI Acceleration Plan,” the official explained.
Specifics on War Force are still sparse. But it is supposed to be similar to the existing Tech Force program —announced in December and still ramping up — which offers $150,000 to $200,000 per year for an initial two-year term. After that, Tech Force hires may either remain in federal service or go to the private sector, with a long list of participating companies promising unspecified “paths” for program alumni to find post-government jobs.
Participating federal agencies can impose their own criteria for specific jobs, the Tech Force website says, but for the program overall, “no fixed amount of work experience is required” and “a traditional degree is not required.”