Ms. Melissa Garcia

Ms. Melissa Garcia serves as a key procurement lead within the Kessel Run organization under the Department of the Air Force, where she manages the acquisition of mission-critical software and digital systems to accelerate air and space operations capability. Her work directly supports the agency’s DevSecOps-driven mission to rapidly develop, integrate, and field secure, cloud-native platforms such as the Aerospace Readiness Enterprise System (ARES). She specializes in full lifecycle contracting for custom software development, focusing on agile, iterative delivery models and modern software engineering practices. Her acquisitions are tightly aligned with operational needs, ensuring digital capabilities are deployed with speed, security, and scalability. Garcia maintains a primary contracting relationship with THE BOEING COMPANY, leveraging their enterprise-scale software engineering and systems integration expertise to deliver complex, mission-essential capabilities. While Boeing is the dominant contractor, her portfolio consistently includes partnerships with a broad ecosystem of specialized software vendors, including firms with deep experience in cloud migration, CI/CD pipelines, and secure containerized architectures. Her procurement approach emphasizes performance-based outcomes, modular contracting, and continuous delivery, fostering collaborative, long-term vendor relationships grounded in technical alignment and operational readiness. Garcia’s contracting strategy is defined by a 100% small business set-aside preference under FAR 19.5, reflecting a steadfast commitment to expanding opportunities for small businesses in defense software development. She actively structures solicitations to maximize participation from SDVOSBs, HUBZone firms, and other socioeconomically disadvantaged vendors, ensuring equitable access to high-impact digital modernization contracts. Her pattern of awarding exclusively to small businesses underscores a deliberate institutional focus on innovation, agility, and workforce diversification within the defense tech sector. Her procurement activity is exclusively focused on NAICS 541511—Custom Computer Programming Services—reflecting a deep specialization in bespoke software development, system integration, and digital platform modernization. She procures services related to full-stack application development, DevSecOps toolchains, cloud infrastructure automation, and secure API ecosystems, all tailored to the unique demands of air and space command and control systems.