Tracey L. Carothers

Tracey L. Carothers serves as a procurement specialist focused on advanced scientific and engineering acquisitions, driving the agency’s mission to secure cutting-edge research and specialized instrumentation. She manages a portfolio of complex contracts centered on physical, engineering, and life sciences R&D, alongside high-precision aerospace and navigation systems. Her role involves end-to-end acquisition planning, solicitation development, and contract administration, ensuring technical requirements align with federal standards and mission-critical objectives. Carothers operates with a strong emphasis on technical rigor, often collaborating with scientific teams to define performance-based specifications that support innovation and operational readiness. Her contractor relationships are primarily with mid- to large-scale firms possessing deep expertise in laboratory instrumentation, systems engineering, and advanced manufacturing. She routinely engages vendors capable of delivering custom R&D solutions, test equipment, and mission-specific sensor systems. While no single contractor dominates her portfolio, she consistently partners with organizations holding relevant ITAR, ISO, and AS9100 certifications, favoring those with proven capabilities in high-reliability environments and rigorous quality control frameworks. Carothers’s procurement patterns reflect a strong preference for open competition, with 100% of her acquisitions issued without set-aside designations. This indicates a strategic focus on technical merit and capability over socioeconomic categorization, though she remains compliant with all federal small business policies. Her approach prioritizes competition among qualified firms, ensuring the best technical solutions are selected regardless of vendor size or status. Her primary procurement focus lies in NAICS 541712 and 541715, supporting fundamental and applied research in physics, engineering, and life sciences, as well as NAICS 334511 for the manufacturing of precision guidance, navigation, and detection systems. She procures specialized equipment including spectrometers, environmental test chambers, inertial navigation units, and prototype sensor arrays, demonstrating deep domain expertise in scientific instrumentation and aerospace systems integration.