The toughest part is keeping candidates warm after an offer is extended. They need to gain Public Trust clearance even if they're already cleared. The transfer process can take months to complete (typically 6-8 weeks). The higher level of clearance they have, the shorter the process should be. All candidates must be U.S. Citizens - Green Card works as well. 

Reiteration on the project (115 employees total - 1/2 Java, 1/2 .NET): Large USCIS (Customs and Immigration - Under DHS) Program called "Jets."  This is a large bio-metrics program, anybody that immigrates to the US will have their fingerprints tracked in this system so it is key critical.  The application is developed in Java & .NET, the Java portion is bigger.  Their performance on this program is very strong and they have a near perfect rating on it from the gov't.

Candidates must be comfortable building out web services, i.e. working with RESTful API services.

They use Angular on the front end as well as React for testing applications. 

AWS is the environment they'll be working in - it's nice to have, not a necessity.

Must have at least 10 years of professional experience (8 years if they have a Masters).

Tenure is important to them. No job-hoppers. 

Location: Java can be in Fairfax (walking distance from Dunn Loring station) OR Washington, DC (off 3rd Street - China Town). 
.NET needs to be in Fairfax

Interview process:
1. Phone screen 
2. In-person 

Bill rate: $110/hr
Conversion salary: $140K

In short:
Java - must have: Java, Spring, Angular, 10+ years
.NET - must have: .NET, C#, SQL, MVC, 10+ years

AWS and CI/CD = nice to have for both