How to Get Started as a Federal Contractor: My Journey and What I Learned About It

A few weeks ago, I became a SAM-registered federal contractor. CAGE Code 18MC2, cleared to work as a subcontractor supporting NASA Johnson Space Center and other aerospace programs.

Getting here taught me more about federal procurement in three weeks than I learned in three years of casually thinking about it. If you're considering federal contracting as a small business, here's what the process actually looks like.

Understanding What You're Actually Offering

Before you touch SAM.gov, you need to know what gap you're filling. Not in a business plan way. In a practical "what problem do I solve for prime contractors" way.

I spent years building custom websites for small businesses. Good work, but limited scale. Then I started paying attention to the technical staffing market around NASA JSC.

Prime contractors need people who can actually do technical work, not just people with good resumes. Most staffing agencies match keywords. They can't assess whether someone genuinely knows a technology stack or just memorized the LinkedIn buzzwords.

I can assess that. Ten years writing production code means I can have an actual technical conversation with a candidate. I know when someone's competent versus when they're bluffing.

That's my offering: practitioner-level technical vetting for aerospace staffing positions. It's specific, it's defensible, and it solves a real problem for primes trying to staff complex programs.

The SAM Registration Process

SAM.gov registration is free. Ignore anyone charging you for it. The government doesn't charge. Period.

The actual process took me about three hours to complete the initial submission. Here's what slowed me down:

Everything has to match your IRS records exactly.

Not "pretty close." Exactly. Same legal business name, same spelling, same punctuation, same abbreviations. One character difference triggers a validation failure.

I had to pull up my actual IRS documents and copy them character-for-character. If your incorporation paperwork says "Refined Web Solutions, LLC" but your IRS filing says "Refined Web Solutions LLC" (no comma), use the IRS version. The system is not forgiving.

Your address can't be a P.O. box.

They want a physical location where your business operates. Again, it needs to match what the IRS has on file, formatted exactly the same way.

The banking section matters more than you think.

You're entering the account where the federal government will eventually send payments. Routing number, account number, bank address. All of it gets verified against your bank's official records. Get one digit wrong and you could be dealing with payment delays months from now, even after you've won work.

NAICS codes are strategic, not just descriptive.

I picked 561320 (Temporary Help Services) as my primary code because that's where my small business status will hold as I grow. Your primary NAICS determines your size standards. Choose carefully.

I got my Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) immediately after submitting. The full registration approval took 12 business days. That's faster than average. I've seen people wait four to six weeks because of documentation mismatches.

The approval email was anticlimactic. Just a notification that my registration was active. No fanfare. But that's when you're officially in the federal procurement database and primes can find you.

The Huntsville Angle

I'm based in Huntsville, Texas. Not the Huntsville in Alabama that everyone associates with aerospace. This Huntsville is about 70 miles north of Houston, close enough to NASA JSC without Houston's overhead costs.

I also spent years working a mixture of private and public security, including being a correctional officer for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. That background gives me something most web developers don't have: an understanding of security protocol, information handling discipline, and operational awareness. When you're placing technical staff on aerospace or defense-adjacent work, those instincts matter. It's a credibility builder when talking to primes about vetting candidates for sensitive programs.

Running Both Businesses

I'm keeping the web development work going. It pays bills and I genuinely enjoy building clean, fast websites for local businesses.

But I'm also realistic about scale. Custom web development trades hours for dollars. There's a ceiling. The staffing side has different economics. Place the right person on a federal contract and you've built something that generates value beyond your direct labor.

The two businesses support each other in unexpected ways. My technical background makes me better at candidate vetting. The federal work is teaching me how to operate at larger scale and think in longer timelines.

What's Next

I'm three weeks into this. Still learning how procurement cycles work, how to read solicitations, how primes think about subcontractor relationships.

My first opportunity notification came through SAM.gov three days after registration. I didn't win it, but seeing the proposal process was educational.

Federal contracting moves slow. Proposal timelines are measured in months. Awards take even longer. But the contracts are substantial when they land.

I'm documenting this as I go. Partly to organize my own thinking, partly because honest accounts of breaking into federal contracting as a small business are surprisingly rare.