CACI’s careers FAQ answers the status question in one sentence: “Once you have created an account on searchcareers.caci.com/careers, you can view the status of your submitted applications within the Dashboard section.” That names a place. It defines nothing. GDIT does the same, pointing candidates to “your candidate home page in the GDIT Careers portal (Workday).”

In July 2026 we read the hiring pages all three publish: CACI’s careers FAQs, GDIT’s application FAQs and hiring-process infographic, and Peraton’s experienced-professionals page. Not one defines a status value. Marketing pages are not portals, though, so we read the portals too, and the answer splits. CACI’s careers site is a branded Eightfold AI tenant whose candidate configuration ships an empty status-display map. Peraton’s is an iCIMS/Jibe tenant and ships a populated one, which is why the decoder below is Peraton’s alone. Three vendors, each configured by the employer licensing it, cannot share a vocabulary.

For a fourth prime, see Northrop Grumman application status; for the contractor-versus-agency distinction, contract jobs versus federal jobs.

What do CACI, GDIT and Peraton publish about status?

On their marketing sites GDIT publishes the most process. Inside the portals that ranking inverts.

Two entries need their provenance stated. GDIT’s nine-stage journey comes from an undated infographic; the filename on GDIT’s CDN and the PDF’s embedded creation date both give 4 November 2022. Read it as a roughly-2022 statement GDIT still links from its careers FAQ; those stages narrate the employer’s process, not the labels Workday shows you. CACI’s “one to two weeks” for a crossover is self-reported, with no published sample, method or vintage, and caveated as “subject to change due to customer constraints or delays.” It is not comparable to any government figure below.

Peraton’s portal is the exception, and it changes the advice. Each step carries a title, the heading “What’s happening in this step?”, and a description. Application Received reads “We have received your application … it is in the review stage. We have an internal team ensuring you submitted a complete application” and that you meet the role’s basic qualifications. Application Under Review reads “The Hiring Manager received your resume from the Recruiter and will determine if you will be considered for a phone or in-person interview.” Others include Recruiter Screening, Talent Acquisition Review (the only step carrying a duration, “Usually takes 2 weeks”), Business Interviews, Offer and No Longer Under Consideration. One caveat: several strings in the bundle are unedited vendor defaults, including one reading “Test Hiring Status,” so read these as what the software tells applicants, not as a commitment.

Why is an offer not the end of a cleared requisition?

Because the regulation puts it in the middle. Under 32 CFR 117.10(f)(1), a contractor may submit an investigation request before your start date only if “a written commitment for employment has been made by the contractor” and “the candidate has accepted the offer in writing.” The paperwork you think closes the process begins its longest phase. GDIT’s stage list puts security checks between the offer and a start date set only “once you’ve officially cleared all security checks,” and declines to bound that interval: “timing may vary.”

Read the rest of the subsection before counting weeks. Paragraph (f)(2) requires the commitment to “indicate employment will commence within 45 days of the employee being granted eligibility for access to classified information …” That clock starts at the grant of eligibility. Not at the offer, not at your acceptance, not at the application. It bounds the tail of the process, not the wait, and reading it as “I start within 45 days of signing” switches the measurement basis on yourself. Full text: 32 CFR 117.10 on govinfo; see also contingent offers on cleared reqs.

Why does a live requisition go quiet without anyone lying to you?

Start with the money, and watch the calendars: these companies do not share a fiscal year. CACI’s FY2025 ended 30 June 2025, and its Form 10-K (archived SEC filing) reports $31.4 billion of total backlog against $4.2 billion funded: about 13 percent with appropriated money behind it, the remaining $27.2 billion our subtraction. CACI warns that “there is no assurance that all funded or potential contract value will result in revenues being recognized.”

General Dynamics closed its year on 31 December 2025. Its Technologies segment, which holds GDIT and Mission Systems, reported $16,660 million of total backlog with $9,865 million funded. That looks like 59 percent against CACI’s 13, and the comparison is false: CACI’s total backlog “consists of remaining performance obligations plus unexercised options,” while General Dynamics counts obligations only and parks options and unfunded IDIQ work in a separate $33,280 million column. Its nearest comparable column, total estimated contract value, puts Technologies at $49,940 million; $9,865 million against that is about 20 percent, our division of two numbers the filing prints. Because that column also carries IDIQ work CACI’s basis excludes, the like-for-like share sits between 20 and 59 percent. Nor is the column dead weight: General Dynamics calls it “an important indicator of future orders and revenue” and reports that in 2025 “approximately 85% of the segment’s orders were from additional work on IDIQ contracts or the exercise of options.” Peraton is privately held and files no Form 10-K, so neither check runs on it.

The second mechanism is the protest. Under 31 U.S.C. 3553(d)(3), on notice of a protest inside the relevant window, “the contracting officer may not authorize performance of the contract to begin while the protest is pending,” and work already underway must cease. The freeze is narrower than most candidates assume: the window under (d)(4)(A) closes on the later of 10 days after award or 5 days after an offered debriefing date, and (d)(3)(C) lets the head of the procuring activity override the stay in writing. On DoD procurements, (d)(4)(B) delays that five-day clock until the government answers a disappointed offeror’s debriefing questions in writing. Statute on govinfo; see also how to read a DoD contract award.

How long can it last? Longer than the headline suggests. GAO’s Bid Protest Annual Report for FY2025 (archived), published 12 December 2025, states that “during fiscal year 2025, we issued final decisions within 100 days for all protests filed with GAO.” Read what that bounds: GAO’s own decision, on the protests that reach one, and most do not. GAO closed 1,737 cases and issued 380 merit decisions, because “a significant number of protests filed with our Office do not reach a decision on the merits because agencies voluntarily take corrective action.” Corrective action closes the GAO file, often early, then hands the procurement back for re-evaluation and possible re-award on a clock the statute does not set. Treat 100 days as a bound on GAO, not on your requisition.

Now the column cutting against the tidy version. CACI’s 10-K risk factors state that “the number of bid protests of contract awards by unsuccessful bidders is increasing and the U.S. government is taking longer to resolve such protests.” GAO’s audited count points the other way: 1,688 cases filed in FY2025, down 6 percent. Both belong here. They do not measure the same population: CACI describes protests of its own awards, GAO counts government-wide filings, and CACI’s line is risk-disclosure boilerplate rather than a statistic.

The third mechanism is regulatory. A contractor must determine that “access to classified information is essential in the performance of tasks or services related to the fulfillment of a classified contract,” and 32 CFR 117.10(a)(5) bars requests used to “establish a cache of cleared employees.” That governs who a company may submit for a clearance, not whether it may keep a req open or interview. Our inference: the limit is one reason cleared reqs stall between interview and offer, and a company routinely submitting investigations with no contract behind them would falsify it. See jobs that sponsor a clearance, NISPOM under Part 117 and OCI under FAR 9.5.

How long is the vetting stage actually taking in 2026?

Faster than it has in years on one measure, still far above target on another. The Trusted Workforce 2.0 report for FY2026 Q2, the latest edition as of July 2026, states that “using the fastest 90% standard, investigations were processed in an average of 44 days for Secret-level cases and 57 days for Top Secret-level cases by the end of the quarter.” That basis excludes the slowest tenth of cases. If yours is one of those, none of these averages describes it, and the report publishes no figure that does. Inventory ended at 100,696 cases.

End-to-end timeliness is a different measurement, covering initiation, investigation and adjudication together, and ODNI reports it a quarter behind. Against targets of 75 and 40 days, High Risk ran 130 days over at the last reported point. The chart continues with a dotted projection, and a projection is not a result.

Every row rests on the fastest-90-percent basis, so none counts the slowest tenth, and no two are stages of the same clock. The preliminary-determination row carries the report’s warning that “timeliness numbers are expected to fluctuate as reporting and adoption expands.” An 8-day average on a small, growing base is not a promise; the same series read 26 days Moderate and 28 High a quarter earlier. See how interim clearances work.

One delay is partly preventable. The report identifies an “initiation rejection loop” caused by “incomplete packages, missing fingerprints, or incorrect investigation levels,” each rejected case averaging 12.5 days. Some causes belong to the employer or the agency, so a rejection is not automatically yours to own.

Is there anywhere you can get a real status answer?

Partly, on the government side, and for less of the process than the headline suggests. The quarterly report says DCSA’s Individual Engagement Platform, released in FY2026 Q2, “allows an individual to check the status of their case,” ending a “black box” that “has long frustrated individuals undergoing vetting.” DCSA’s own IEP Status Tracker factsheet of March 2026 is narrower on three points. The tracker “provides an individual’s current case application status, from initiation to submission,” and its footnote adds that “Nodes for Investigation Open, Investigation Closed, Adjudication Complete are greyed out until future iterations.” It shows where your eApp paperwork sits, not where the investigation sits, and the 44-day and 205-day stages above are precisely the greyed-out nodes. Access arrives as a link in an automated eApp email, and only “beginning March 5, 2026,” for cases initiated from that date. DCSA calls it “an optional shared service,” so adoption is not universal, and end-to-end visibility is listed under future enhancements. If your case opened earlier, or your agency has not taken up the service, there is nothing to log into. It tells you nothing about the job in any event.

We run a cleared job board, and for this problem a job board is the weaker tool. Visibility into a specific req means being inside that company’s system: the CACI Dashboard, the GDIT Workday candidate home, the Peraton portal. No aggregator, ours included, reads those screens. A board is good for breadth, surfacing reqs across primes and subcontractors you would not find on three careers pages. Use both. The clearance vocabulary is at least definable, which is why we wrote up the four clearance words employers screen on.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does my status mean in the CACI, GDIT or Peraton portal?

At Peraton, log in: the portal prints a title and an explanation under each step. At CACI and GDIT no published source defines a value. The three systems come from different vendors, configured per employer, so a label in one has no equivalent in another.

How long is the CACI hiring process?

CACI publishes no hiring timeline. Its only published duration covers moving an existing clearance to CACI: “on average, the process takes one to two weeks, but is subject to change due to customer constraints or delays.” That is self-reported, with no sample or method. CACI also concedes a crossover can fail: “there can sometimes be roadblocks if one government agency doesn’t accept a clearance from another government agency.” See moving a clearance.

Why does a cleared requisition stay open for months?

Documented reasons include work sitting in unfunded backlog, an award suspended by a protest under 31 U.S.C. 3553(d)(3), and the investigation queue, which held 100,696 cases at the end of FY2026 Q2. A req can be genuine while all three are true.

Does an offer mean the process is nearly finished?

On a cleared req an offer is often the midpoint. Under 32 CFR 117.10(f)(1) the contractor cannot submit a pre-employment investigation request until it has made a written commitment and you have accepted in writing, so the vetting clock cannot start until after you sign.

What to watch through the rest of 2026

The yardstick is changing. The report states that the fastest-90% approach, “established by Congress in 2004,” is being revised to cover 100 percent of cases, a change that “will decrease reported timeliness but allow agency leaders to have a better understanding of performance by including outliers,” phasing in next quarter. Every timeliness figure above rests on the old basis, so expect the next numbers to look worse while nothing slows down.

Then do the two things that work: read the portal that actually defines its labels if you are applying to one, and ask the recruiter which contract the req is funded under and whether the award is final. Where no definition is published, the label is what it has always been, a screen never designed to tell you anything.