Talent Acquistion Director

Unissant, Inc delivers innovative capabilities to the agencies that keep our nation healthy and safe. We apply our domain expertise, data acumen, and technology know-how to achieve breakthrough results for our clients. Working collaboratively, we advance missions and careers through a focus on honesty, integrity, and dependability. We continuously look for talent excited to join that effort. To learn more about our exciting organization, please visit us at www.unissant.com.

Unissant is seeking a Director of Talent Acquisition to join our team and support our client in Washington DC Metro area

Position Overview

We are seeking a strategic, hands-on Director of Talent Acquisition to lead recruiting across the organization, with a strong focus on cleared, technical and mission-critical talent. This leader will own talent acquisition strategy, team leadership, recruiting operations, and hiring delivery across business units, programs, and corporate functions.

The ideal candidate brings deep experience in government contracting and cleared recruiting, along with the ability to partner closely with business leaders, anticipate talent needs, and translate business priorities into practical hiring plans.

This is a hybrid position based in Herndon, Virginia.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

Set and lead the enterprise talent acquisition strategy across cleared and non-cleared hiring, aligned to business priorities, growth plans, program needs, and organizational capability requirements.

• Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing recruiting team, establishing clear expectations for execution, partnership, quality, speed, and candidate experience.
• Partner with executives, business leaders, program leadership, and shared services to understand business direction, staffing demand, and emerging capability needs, and convert those inputs into proactive recruiting strategies and pipeline plans.
• Participate in business planning and operational discussions to anticipate hiring needs, identify talent risks, and recommend actions before openings are formally approved.
• Lead hiring strategy for cleared roles requiring TS/SCI, CI Polygraph, and Full-Scope Polygraph, while also overseeing recruiting for non-cleared technical, operational, and corporate positions.
• Build scalable recruiting programs, sourcing approaches, and talent pipelines for critical skill areas including software engineering, cybersecurity, cloud, infrastructure, data, AI SMEs, and business operations.
• Strengthen recruiting operations through process design, workflow discipline, technology optimization, and reporting that improve consistency, speed, and decision quality.
• Advise leaders on market conditions, talent availability, compensation considerations, clearance constraints, and realistic time-to-fill expectations for difficult-to-hire roles.
• Oversee offer strategy and approvals, balancing competitiveness, internal equity, contract requirements, and compensation frameworks.
• Use recruiting data and funnel analytics to monitor performance, inform forecasts, and drive continuous improvement across the hiring lifecycle.
• Elevate the company's employer brand in both the cleared and broader technical talent markets through strong messaging, candidate experience, referral strategies, and targeted external engagement.
• Partner closely with HR, Security/FSO, Operations, and business leadership to support efficient hiring, clearance processing, onboarding, and workforce readiness.

Work Experience and Job Skills:

• 10+ years of advanced talent acquisition experience, including significant experience leading recruiting in a government contracting environment.
• Proven success recruiting highly cleared talent, including positions requiring active TS/SCI, CI Polygraph, and Full-Scope Polygraph.
• Experience leading or developing recruiting teams and building scalable talent acquisition practices, processes, and standards.
• Strong track record recruiting