About

What is ClearedPathway?

Built for a narrower lane — people navigating DoD 8140 requirements, clearance-driven hiring, and the financial realities of federal and contractor work.

Most IT career content is written for the generic tech worker. ClearedPathway is built for a narrower lane: people navigating DoD 8140 certification requirements, clearance-driven hiring pipelines, and the financial realities that come with federal and contractor work.

If you're building a cleared career, the rules are different. The hiring environment is different. The certifications that matter are different. The guidance should be too.

Why This Exists

I built ClearedPathway because I kept running into the same gap.

I'm a student building an IT career through certifications, hands-on support experience, and the cleared hiring pipeline. While working in a defense contractor service desk role and preparing for a DoD internship, I built a cert stack that includes A+, Network+, Security+, RHCSA, and more.

Every time I looked for practical guidance on the cleared side of IT, I found the same problem: generic advice, recycled content, or no useful answer at all. Which certifications actually move the needle in DoD environments. What clearance timelines look like in practice. How federal and contractor pay really compares. Very little of it existed in one place, written for people who understand that cleared tech is its own category.

So I built it. My name is Zach — you can follow my path on LinkedIn.

The Audience

Every article is written for people building toward or already operating in the DoD and IC technology space — cleared contractors, GS and GG employees, and professionals still moving through the clearance pipeline. The certification paths, hiring dynamics, and compensation topics covered here are specific to the cleared sector, not a general tech audience.

Editorial Standard

No affiliate links. No boot camp referral codes. No sponsored study guides. Every recommendation is editorially independent. If something is covered here, it's because it's the right call — not because it pays a commission.

Topics

The topics cleared workers actually search for — and rarely find good answers to.

Certifications — Roadmaps and guidance aligned with DoD 8140 and security-focused technical roles
Clearances — Process mechanics, adjudication timelines, and what actually affects a case
Career — Strategy for cybersecurity, infrastructure, cloud, and support-to-engineering transitions in cleared environments
Finance — Compensation and tax considerations for W-2 federal employees and 1099 cleared contractors