Vanessa Salazar

Vanessa Salazar serves as a Project Manager within the Texas Human Services - Workforce agency, where she leads the planning, execution, and oversight of technology-driven workforce development initiatives. In her primary procurement role, she manages the full lifecycle of acquisition activities, from needs assessment and market research to contract award and performance monitoring. Her work directly supports the agency’s mission to modernize employment services through digital transformation, ensuring that technology solutions align with state workforce goals and compliance requirements. She routinely handles complex, high-priority contracts for custom software development and systems integration, often coordinating with cross-functional teams to deliver scalable, secure, and user-centered digital platforms. Vanessa collaborates with a diverse pool of IT service providers specializing in government-compliant software development, though no single contractor dominates her portfolio. Her procurement approach emphasizes competitive bidding and performance-based outcomes, fostering partnerships with vendors capable of delivering agile, secure, and scalable solutions. She maintains a vendor-neutral stance, prioritizing technical capability, past performance, and compliance over vendor size or affiliation, ensuring transparency and fairness in the selection process. Her contracting activity is entirely non-set-aside, with 100% of acquisitions conducted under full and open competition. This reflects a deliberate strategy to maximize innovation and efficiency by drawing from the broadest possible pool of qualified vendors, without socioeconomic preferences. While she does not prioritize 8(a), HUBZone, or SDVOSB set-asides, her process remains fully compliant with all federal and state procurement regulations. Vanessa’s procurement focus is exclusively centered on NAICS 541511—Custom Computer Programming Services. She specializes in acquiring bespoke software applications, workflow automation tools, and integrated data systems that support unemployment services, job placement platforms, and workforce analytics. Her technical domain expertise lies in cloud-native development, API-driven architectures, and secure data interoperability between state systems, ensuring that all solutions meet rigorous cybersecurity and accessibility standards.