Who We Are
Fractional executive leadership for growth-stage federal contracting and national security companies that need senior operators, not more consultants.
The Tacitus Group is a executive leadership firm built on more than two decades of senior management and operational experience at the highest levels of the U.S. Intelligence Community and Department of Defense. We deliver senior executive operational leadership to growth-stage IC and DoD contractors in the $10M to $500M range: Operating Partner (the fractional CAO seat), Right Hand (the embedded Chief of Staff), Executive Office (build or operate the full Office of the CEO), and Fractional VP of Operations, providing C-suite operational leadership without the cost or commitment of a full-time executive hire.
We place senior operators discreetly into your leadership team directly on a fractional basis. Not advisors who hand you a deck and leave. Operators who sit in the chair, attend the meetings, make the decisions, and own the outcomes. We build the systems your company needs to scale. Every engagement has a transition plan from day one: we operate the seat, build the capability underneath, and hand the keys back stronger than we found them. When the engagement is done, you run independently at a higher level than when we arrived.
We understand how the government customer actually operates, not just how to serve it from the outside. That perspective changes everything.
The GovCon fractional advisory market is well served on the financial compliance side. What none of those firms can provide is senior operational executive leadership from a team that spent decades as senior staff officers and executives inside the Intelligence Community and Department of Defense. The Tacitus Network, our affiliated group of cleared senior IC and DoD alumni, drawn from former agency Chiefs of Staff, Staff Directors, and senior front office leaders, staffs our Operating Partner, Right Hand, and Executive Office engagements within Enterprise Services.
Beyond government contracting, the core operational competencies that define our value, organizational design, talent strategy, program governance, change management, and scaling founder-led companies, are equally relevant to non-GovCon growth-stage businesses navigating the same structural challenge: they have outgrown founder-led operations but cannot justify a full-time Chief Administrative Officer.
Headquartered in Sterling, Virginia, we serve companies across the national capital region and beyond.
Six differentiators that no competitor in the market can replicate.
Our team spent decades as senior staff officers and executives inside the U.S. Intelligence Community and Department of Defense. Not advising it from the outside, but working within its organizations. That perspective shapes everything about how we approach operational challenges.
Senior staff officer and manager roles at the most senior levels of the national security enterprise. This is distinct from commercial GovCon COO experience. We served and led inside the IC itself.
We lead with operational and organizational leadership: org design, talent strategy, program governance, change management, and executive-level problem solving. Our approach is informed by the government customer's perspective, not the contractor's.
An affiliated group of cleared, senior IC and DoD alumni: former staff directors, program managers, Chiefs of Staff, and senior operational leaders. The Network staffs our Operating Partner, Right Hand, and Executive Office engagements and represents a talent pool no competitor can access without the network, the credibility, and the clearance to recruit from it.
GovCon Founders, CEOs, and COOs serving IC and DoD customers view our partners as peers who have operated at their customer's level. For IC-adjacent clients, this customer-side credibility is the highest-value relationship in the market.
The core competencies that define our value are not GovCon-specific. Organizational design, talent strategy, and scaling complex organizations transfer directly to any growth-stage company navigating the transition from founder-led operations to structured executive management.
A discipline, not a disclaimer.
We do not publish a client list. Engagements at the Operating Partner, Right Hand, Executive Office, and Fractional VP of Operations level touch the most sensitive parts of a company: its leadership dynamics, its operational gaps, its strategic posture, and in many cases its preparation for an ownership transition. These engagements are sensitive and only at the client's discretion are they disclosed.
References are available on request, with the client's prior consent. Beyond that, our work speaks through the people who choose to talk about it.