Caelum Research Corporation

Caelum Research Corporation, a Women-Owned Small Business based in Rockville, Maryland, holds over $56.7 billion in combined federal contract potential value as a prime contractor (97% of awards) across IT services, technical data collection, systems engineering, and defense research and development work. The vendor competes predominantly under full-and-open procurement, with smaller pockets of Total Small Business set-aside work; recent prime awards split between small-business-set-aside delivery orders and competitive awards under full-and-open vehicle access.

Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) at Aberdeen Proving Ground anchors Caelum's footprint both by dollar concentration and by strategic vehicle position. ATEC has issued 21 awards carrying $634.2 million in combined potential value, representing the largest single customer by dollar magnitude. The vendor holds two single-award IDVs directly with ATEC: a $201 million indefinite delivery contract (set aside for Total Small Business) for data collection support services running through April 2027, and an $181.9 million ITSS indefinite delivery contract (also Total Small Business set-aside) extending to January 2027. Under the data collection IDV, Caelum executes cost-plus-fixed-fee delivery orders for technical data collection, computer operations, and range scheduling at Aberdeen Proving Ground; recent Year 4 and Year 2 task orders carried ceilings of $27.5 million and $24 million respectively. Under the ITSS IDV, Caelum issues time-and-materials and firm-fixed-price delivery orders for IT helpdesk, training, engineering, and software support; recent delivery orders have run $15.8 million to $17.7 million annually. Separate from these IDVs, ATEC issued a $25.8 million delivery order in April 2026 for data collection support services under the Total Small Business set-aside, extending to April 2027.

Caelum's customer roster spans 39 agencies, though dollar concentration is sharp. The top five customers by potential value account for 67% of combined potential value: Army Contracting Command Aberdeen Proving Ground (4 awards, $37.4 billion potential value — driven largely by the Missile Defense Agency's $151 billion SHIELD IDIQ described below), Army Test and Evaluation Command ($634.2 million), GSA Federal Acquisition Service ($124.7 million), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ($66 million), and Army TACOM Life Cycle Management Command ($50.6 million). The concentration signal bifurcates: by award count, TACOM leads with 41 awards, followed by NOAA with 35; by dollars, ATEC and the SHIELD vehicle dominate. This divergence reflects Caelum's position as a high-volume provider of smaller-value IT support and operations work for TACOM and NOAA, while holding anchor contracts with ATEC and a new strategic seat on the Missile Defense Agency's defense architecture vehicle.

On December 29, 2025, the Missile Defense Agency awarded Caelum a multiple-award indefinite delivery contract titled Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD), with a $151 billion ceiling and 10-year performance window through December 2035. The SHIELD IDIQ encompasses research and development, prototyping, systems engineering, weapon design, production, test and evaluation, and cybersecurity modernization across multi-domain defense (air, missile, space, cyber, and hybrid threats). The contract utilizes full-and-open competition with no set-asides. An initial delivery order under SHIELD was issued on the same date for $500 with performance at Huntsville, Alabama, establishing the delivery mechanism for subsequent task orders. This vehicle represents Caelum's entry into a strategic defense-architecture procurement at the portfolio level — a material shift from the vendor's historical concentration on point solutions and IT operations support.

Caelum's vehicle footprint includes three primary infrastructure platforms: the SHIELD IDIQ ($151 billion ceiling, 1 delivery order to date), Army TACOM IDV W56HZV11DL501 (65 task orders, $73.7 million combined potential value), NOAA's NOAALink vehicle (18 task orders, $41.2 million), Information Technology Enterprise Solutions 3 - Services (ITES-3S) (14 task orders, $28.2 million), GSA Schedule GS35F0124K (13 task orders, $1 million), and Army IDV W91CRB22D0002 (9 task orders, $86.9 million). The ITES-3S vehicle hosts work for Army War College and Defense Health Agency, including a $13.5 million firm-fixed-price delivery order for CIO IT services labor at Carlisle, Pennsylvania (awarded June 2024, completion July 2028) and a $1.26 million fiber-and-hybrid distributed antenna system upgrade at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (completed September 2023).

Caelum has demonstrated secondary capability in Department of Homeland Security science and technology research. The vendor holds a $997,806 Phase II SBIR contract (DHS S&T, awarded April 2023, completion June 2025) for machine learning tools for molecular recognition applied to portable hazardous-substance detector modules; earlier, a $150,000 Phase I SBIR contract (May 2022) developed technology for agent-agnostic detection of biological hazards. These awards position Caelum as an emerging innovator in detection and threat-sensing within the DHS portfolio, though dollar magnitude remains small relative to Army commitments.

Recent activity shows steady performance velocity with five awards completing inside the next twenty-four months (combined potential value $70.5 million), including ATEC delivery orders and DHS SBIR Phase II work. Awards per year have remained flat at 7–8 per year across 2023–2025, with 4 awards in the 2026 snapshot (data current through mid-April 2026), suggesting a stable but not accelerating award cadence outside the SHIELD procurement signal.

On federal service contracts captured in the Service Contract Inventory above the $150,000 reporting threshold, Caelum invoiced $67.2 million across prime contracts in FY2022–FY2024, with $14.9 million in FY2022, $28.7 million in FY2023, and $23.5 million in FY2024. SCI-reported workforce ran roughly 167–211 FTEs across the reporting period, reflecting contract-level FTE counts rather than company-wide headcount; SCI figures capture a subset of the vendor's federal services revenue and exclude goods, classified work, and non-federal business. Government-paid hourly rates on prime SCI contracts ran a median of $76.79 per hour, with the 10th percentile at $60.31 and 90th percentile at $95.63, indicating a mid-tier IT operations labor posture. Across prime contracts in SCI, an average of 16 percent of contractor hours were subcontracted to 11 named subcontractors, signaling that Caelum builds and delivers most work through its own direct workforce while supplementing with targeted sub engagement.

Caelum's recent sub awards have flowed through Agile Defense LLC (IT support labor for PEO Missiles and Space, two awards in 2024–2025), Amentum Technology Inc. (period-of-performance and funding modifications through April 2024), and Abacus Technology Corporation (IT systems support at Aberdeen Proving Ground, July 2024). These are smaller supplement engagements rather than strategic teaming relationships; the sub-award footprint (3% of total recent awards) confirms Caelum's primary posture as a prime contractor.

Caelum's active GSA Schedule labor portfolio spans 133 categories ranging from $36.53 per hour for data technicians with associate degrees and no experience to $261.42 per hour for IT Technical Advisors with bachelor's degrees and twelve years of experience. A majority of categories explicitly require secret-level security clearances, aligning with the vendor's core Army Test and Evaluation Command work. Representative mid-tier categories include Systems Administrator III at $99.84 per hour (bachelor's, 4 years), IT Security Specialist II at $128.03 per hour, and Programmer Analyst III at $113.82 per hour, anchoring Caelum's positioning as an IT operations and engineering services provider. GSA Schedule engagement remains secondary to the vendor's IDIQ footprint; top-vehicle analysis shows schedule task orders carry lower individual ceiling values ($1 million combined across 13 orders) relative to the IDIQ platforms.

The vendor's ownership profile — Women-Owned Small Business, Subchapter S corporation, minority-owned, and Asian-Pacific American-owned — recurs across the award set as a WOSB designation, anchoring eligibility for small-business-set-aside vehicles with ATEC and other Army components. However, the majority of recent awards compete under full-and-open or no-set-aside designations, reflecting Caelum's capacity to compete across vehicle types and its transition into larger strategic platforms (SHIELD, ITES-3S) where set-asides are absent.

Established in 1987, Caelum Research Corporation is a high-technology, woman-owned small business that provides

information technology/management, systems engineering, and logistics support services to DoD and civil agencies. We

are headquartered in Rockville, Maryland with a diverse and dispersed workforce. Every aspect of Caelum's organization

is driven by customer satisfaction-creating value, exceeding customer expectations, meeting commitments, and

delivering quality products and services.