Senior Strategic Issues Specialist; Senior

• Employee Type Salary
• Required Degree Masters

Description

Spiral Solutions & Technologies, Inc. (SS&T) is seeking a Senior Strategic Issues Specialist to support United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM)/J57 under the Strategic Wargaming and Research of Deterrence Support (SWARDS) requirement. This position provides advisory and assistance services (A&AS) to sustain and enhance USSTRATCOM's deterrence planning, wargaming, analytic agenda, and allied engagement efforts.
This is a contingent-on-award role.

The position provides senior-level analytic and advisory support spanning deterrence mission analysis, wargaming and experimentation, analytic agenda development, and allied burden-sharing assessment. The specialist coordinates complex analytic efforts with minimal oversight, applies deep expertise in deterrence theory and the U.S. nuclear enterprise, and advises senior leaders by synthesizing diverse analytic inputs into actionable insights.

This position requires access to classified systems and material supporting national-security programs. All contractor personnel must be U.S. citizens and maintain a Top Secret (TS) security clearance, with eligibility for Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI), Nuclear Command and Control (NC2), and Special Access Programs (SAP) accesses. Eligibility for required accesses must be held at time of task order award or prior to commencement of work/replacement approval.

Personnel must comply with the task order DD Form 254, Department of Defense Security Classification Specification, applicable USSTRATCOM security instructions, cybersecurity and physical-security requirements, and all applicable requirements for handling classified and restricted-distribution information.

• Support deterrence mission analysis, including assessments of adversary perceptions, deliberate and campaign deterrence planning across all deterrence periods, and development of strategies to impose prohibitive costs on adversaries.
• Support development of courses of action to achieve deterrence strategies and approaches for measuring and evaluating the deterrent impact of U.S. actions.
• Support impact assessment of deterrence campaigns and risk-of-strategic-deterrence-failure assessments.
• Contribute senior-level expertise to professional military wargaming, including design, development, execution, adjudication, and post-game analysis at the strategic and operational levels.
• Support scenario development, including multi-domain, joint, and interagency scenarios supporting deterrence analysis, OPLAN/CONPLAN assessment, crisis decision-making, and strategic competition.
• Apply deterrence-focused analytic methodologies, including Deterrence Impact Analysis, hypothesis-based experimentation, or equivalent structured analytic techniques.
• Assist in developing, refining, and documenting USSTRATCOM's Analytic Agenda, including literature reviews, research, and engagement with practitioners, academics, and other stakeholders.
• Coordinate complex analytic efforts with minimal oversight while maintaining strict compliance with all inherently governmental boundaries.
• Advise senior leaders by synthesizing diverse analytic inputs and translating complex findings into actionable insights, supported by strong oral and written communication skills.
• Capture and synthesize lessons learned from wargames, experiments, and strategic assessments, producing DoW-formatted, publication-ready reports, briefings, and documentation for senior leaders.
• Apply current knowledge of U.S. Government decision-making processes, including interagency coordination, national-level decision structures, and the roles of senior civilian and military leaders in crisis and deterrence contexts.
• Apply knowledge of the transactional nature of U.S. alliances, the imperative of allied burden-sharing, and competitive dynamics that influence strategic decision-making.
• Apply knowledge of joint planning processes, strategic military operations, and the U.S. nuclear enterprise, including integration of USSTRATCOM OPLAN/CONPLAN activities with Geographic Combatant Command plans.
• Prepare trip reports, technical reports, and presentation materials documenting analysis, meetings, and travel results in accordance with contract deliverable requirements.

• A minimum of 12 years of experience in U.S. defense policy, strategic deterrence, wargaming, operational planning, or strategic…