Tampa, Des Moines, and Charleston are the three airports that have publicly committed to converting their checkpoints to private screening under TSA Gold+.
No contract has been awarded. Proposals for the Gold+ contract vehicle closed on July 31. TSA anticipates awards before the federal fiscal year ends September 30, and airport specific task orders come after that.
On August 3, Leidos posted three job requisitions for a Program Manager, Airport Screening Operations. One in Tampa, requisition R-00188663. One in Des Moines, R-00188666. One in Charleston, R-00188668. Same day, sequential numbers, identical job descriptions.
All three were promoted this week on LinkedIn by Darby LaJoye, who identifies himself as Vice President, Airports, Borders and Security at Leidos, with links to each requisition and a request that people share them.
Who Is Doing the Hiring
Before Leidos, LaJoye spent his career at TSA. He served as Executive Assistant Administrator for Security Operations, the senior career position responsible for screening operations across the agency, leading a workforce the agency described as more than 60,000 people. He twice served as Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Administrator.
Leidos announced his hiring in December 2022 as Vice President and Strategic Account Executive for the Department of Homeland Security, describing the role in terms of growing the company's DHS business.
We are not suggesting anything improper. Federal officials take private sector jobs, and doing so is lawful and common. We are stating who is recruiting, because it is relevant to understanding what is happening and because he stated it publicly himself.
Leidos appears on TSA's current list of companies holding the Screening Partnership Program IDIQ contract vehicle.
What the Job Description Says
The posting is unusually specific, and officers should read it rather than take our summary.
It describes the position as the on site screening operations lead for a designated airport under the TSA Gold+ program, which it defines as a model in which participating airports transition from federally operated screening to qualified private sector screening performed under TSA regulation, oversight, and detection standards pursuant to 49 U.S.C. 44920.
Four things in it are worth an officer's attention.
The contracted workforce it describes includes Transportation Security Officers, Lead TSOs, and Supervisory TSOs.
Among the program manager's listed responsibilities is leading transition in and transition out, including government furnished equipment transfer and "the right of first refusal for the incumbent screening workforce." The right of first refusal appears as a transition task the contractor administers.
And the minimum qualifications include, as one alternative path, at least three years as a certified Supervisory Transportation Security Officer. A current STSO at any of these three airports meets the stated minimum qualification for the job.
The posting also states that only TSA qualified equipment may be deployed and that TSA retains qualification, certification, and acceptance of detection capability. That is the contractor describing the oversight boundary, and it is accurate.
One more detail is worth noting for how far along the planning appears to be. The preferred qualifications state that a candidate with sufficient experience is positioned for advancement toward the corporate Operations and Program Manager role, identified in the posting as IDIQ Key Personnel. Key personnel at the IDIQ level is a defined requirement in the Gold+ solicitation, with resumes due as part of the proposal. The posting describes a corporate structure organized around a contract vehicle under which no award has been announced.
What This Does and Does Not Show
It does not show that Leidos has won anything. Companies staff in advance of award routinely, and a posting is a bet, not a contract. Any of the twenty one companies on the IDIQ vehicle may compete for these task orders.
What it does show is that one company is publicly recruiting site leadership for all three announced conversion airports, before awards, and promoting those openings through the executive over that business line.
We looked at what other IDIQ holders are doing publicly. Several of the companies added to that vehicle are federal guard services and technology firms with no visible airport screening operations. We found no comparable postings.
That is an observation about public behavior, not a prediction.
Why It Matters to an Officer
If you work at Tampa, Des Moines, or Charleston, the person who will run your checkpoint is being recruited right now, and the job description tells you a great deal about what the operation will look like.
It tells you the contractor administers the right of first refusal. It tells you compensation is described in statutory terms rather than in terms of matching what you make today.
We have written elsewhere about what that statutory floor means, and about the difference between a wage and a combined compensation figure. Those distinctions are the substance of the decision many officers will face this fall.
Read the posting yourself. It is public, it is detailed, and it was written by the party that would employ you.
For the compensation analysis, see You Have Three Numbers. Only One of Them Is Your Paycheck.
If you want to understand how this applies to your own situation, that is a conversation worth having. It costs you nothing. againstgiantsllc.com/get-help.html or info@againstgiantsllc.com