The 10 NAICS Codes Bringing in the Most Federal Money Right Now

If you want to win government contracts, don’t guess at which industry to chase. Follow the money.

NAICS codes (North American Industry Classification System) are how the federal government categorizes every contract it awards. When an agency posts a solicitation, it tags it with one or more NAICS codes. When you register on SAM.gov, you pick NAICS codes that match your business. The match between the two determines which contracts you can compete for.

Which means picking the right NAICS codes is one of the most consequential decisions you make in your entire govcon career. Pick codes that match what you actually do, sure. But also pick the ones where the government is actually spending money. Those two filters together are the difference between bidding on contracts that exist and bidding on contracts that don’t.

These are the 10 codes I’d be looking at right now if I were starting from zero in 2026. Not a definitive ranking. Every year shifts based on which agencies have budget and which programs are getting prioritized. But these are the codes where the volume of small-business-eligible opportunities has been consistently strong.

[VERIFY WITH NICK]: The specific dollar figures and contract counts below are approximate, drawn from FPDS.gov and SBA data trends. Before publishing, run the actual current numbers from FPDS for the most recent fiscal year. The relative ranking is correct; the exact figures may need updating.

1. NAICS 541512($31.2 Billion) — Computer Systems Design Services

Federal IT spending dwarfs almost every other category, so this is where I’d start if I were in tech. Computer Systems Design Services covers IT consulting, systems integration, custom software, and IT modernization. The federal government spends north of $20 billion a year on this code alone. A meaningful chunk gets set aside for small businesses, often somewhere in the 20 to 30 percent range.

Small IT firms win here. Solo developers with cleared past performance. Government modernization specialists. Cybersecurity boutiques. The barrier is past performance more than technical skill, which is the catch-22 of govcon: you need federal experience to win federal work, and you need federal work to get federal experience.

Way around the catch-22: start as a sub. Find a prime that already won a 541512 contract and offer to do a piece of it. That builds your past performance for the next bid where you compete as a prime.(or be the prime and get a sub with past performance and use theres Which is allowed)

2. NAICS 236220 (?)— Commercial and Institutional Building Construction

If you’re in construction, this is the big one. Federal facilities, military bases, courthouses, GSA buildings. Tens of billions a year. The biggest buyers are the Army Corps of Engineers, Navy NAVFAC, and GSA’s Public Buildings Service.

One thing makes this code different from most. Surety bonds. Federal construction contracts almost always require performance bonds, and most new contractors can’t get bonded above $500K or $1M without serious financial backing. The bond requirement is what actually filters the field. If you can get bonded, the competition thins out fast. If you can’t, you’re stuck with the smallest contracts until you build a track record.

Set-aside contractors (SDVOSB, HUBZone) tend to win the smaller projects. Established commercial GCs with bonding capacity win the bigger ones.

3. NAICS 561210($37.1 Billion) — Facilities Support Services

This is the catch-all for outsourced facilities operations. Janitorial. Maintenance. Grounds. Security. Food service. Integrated facility management. The federal government runs an enormous physical footprint and outsources most of the day-to-day operations.

Underrated for new contractors. A lot of these contracts are small-dollar, multi-year, and frequently set aside for small businesses. Which means you can win one, hold it for 3 to 5 years, build past performance, and use that to bid on bigger things. They’re not glamorous but they’re how a lot of small businesses build up the credibility they need to compete in higher-dollar codes.

Federal agencies are conservative buyers. They hire firms that have done similar work before. So if you’ve cleaned a school district or a hospital system, that translates well into a 561210 bid.

4. NAICS 541330($42 Billion) — Engineering Services

Anything that requires a stamped engineering drawing falls here. Civil, structural, mechanical, electrical, environmental, specialty engineering services. Federal infrastructure work. Department of Defense projects.

The federal infrastructure spending wave is still working through the system in 2026. Engineering services tied to bridges, roads, water systems, and energy projects are seeing sustained demand. Environmental engineering is especially active because most federal facilities have environmental remediation backlogs that have been deferred for years.

Licensed engineering firms win here. Multi-discipline consultancies do well. Small specialty firms with niche expertise (especially environmental and energy) often beat larger generalists for the right contracts.

5. NAICS 541611($6.18 Billion) — Administrative Management Consulting

Management consulting for federal agencies. Organizational change, program evaluation, strategic planning, process improvement. The big consulting firms play here (Booz Allen, Deloitte, McKinsey Federal). Small businesses also win meaningful work, usually as subs to the primes.

Honest assessment: this is a relationship-heavy code. Past performance and security clearances matter more than price for most awards. If you don’t have either, you’re going to struggle. If you’ve worked at a federal agency for a decade and you start a consulting firm, this code is probably your fastest path to revenue.

6. NAICS 541519($6.88 Billion) — Other Computer Related Services

Sister code to 541512. Covers IT-related services that don’t fit cleanly into systems design. IT staffing. Network operations. Technical support. Data center operations. IT training.

Lower-dollar contracts on average than 541512, but more of them, and easier to break into for new contractors. If you’re brand new to govcon and you’re in tech, this is often a better starting point than 541512 because the contracts are smaller and the bidding pool is less competitive.

7. NAICS 561720($1.74 Billion)— Janitorial Services

Specifically janitorial. Just cleaning. The federal government has a lot of buildings to clean and most of the work goes to small businesses through set-asides.

This is the code most contractors I talk to skip past, and it’s a mistake. The contracts are real money. A few hundred thousand to several million per year per contract. Multi-year terms. The work is steady. Competition is thinner than in any tech-adjacent code because the people who could compete in 541512 don’t want to be in janitorial. Their loss.

HUBZone and 8(a)-certified businesses tend to win these. Security clearance requirements are common because the cleaning crews go into federal buildings.

8. NAICS 238210($15.9) — Electrical Contractors and Other Wiring

Electrical work on federal facilities. New construction, renovations, security system installations, low-voltage work, energy retrofits. The push for federal building energy efficiency has driven sustained demand here over the past few years and shows no sign of slowing.

Licensed electrical contractors win these. Set-aside-eligible firms have an edge because federal buildings often have set-aside subcontract requirements. If you’ve got federal facility access experience already, that’s worth more than a lower bid for most awards.

9. NAICS 541715($13.9) — Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences

R&D contracts. SBIR and STTR programs. Agency-funded research. Defense R&D. Biomedical research. Total federal R&D spending runs into the tens of billions, and SBIR specifically reserves a portion for small businesses. The acronym literally stands for Small Business Innovation Research.

Different beast from the rest of this list. SBIR/STTR has its own application process, its own review cycle, and its own learning curve that doesn’t transfer from regular SAM.gov solicitations. If you fit the profile (research-focused small business, university spinout, firm with credentialed research staff), it’s worth treating SBIR as its own track rather than a sideline. The wins are bigger and the work is more interesting.

10. NAICS 561499($12.5 Billion) — All Other Business Support Services

The catch-all code. Document scanning. Mailroom operations. Court reporting. Transcription. Language services. A long tail of administrative support functions. Federal agencies outsource a huge volume of this work through smaller-dollar contracts that fly under the radar of bigger firms.

Underrated for the same reason 561720 is underrated. The work isn’t glamorous, the competition is thin, and a small specialty firm can win consistently in this code without ever competing against the big primes. If you’ve got a niche capability (translation, court reporting, scanning), you can build a profitable business in 561499 with surprisingly little overhead.

How to use this list

Don’t pick all 10. Pick 2 or 3 that genuinely match what your business does. NAICS codes are how agencies find you and how set-asides apply to you. If you pick codes you can’t fulfill, you’ll waste your time bidding on work you can’t actually win.

If your business doesn’t fit any of these 10, that’s fine. The federal government spends across hundreds of NAICS codes. The point of this list isn’t “only bid in these codes.” The point is to give you a sense of where the money is, so you can pick codes within your business that actually have volume behind them.

Not sure which codes apply? The Census Bureau has a free NAICS lookup at census.gov/naics. Or let SAMstream’s setup process recommend codes based on a description of your business. The platform matches you during onboarding.( you can always add more later as you find different fields to expand to)

Beyond NAICS — PSC codes also matter

Federal contracts also use PSC codes (Product Service Codes). NAICS describes your industry. PSC describes what’s being bought. Some opportunities are filtered by NAICS, some by PSC, and many use both. If you’re serious about optimizing your search, you need to understand both.

Rule of thumb: NAICS is your industry. PSC is the deliverable. A construction company is in NAICS 236220, but the PSC code for a specific contract might be Y1ZZ (“Construction of miscellaneous facilities”).

More on PSC codes in a future post.

How to find contracts in your NAICS codes faster

The whole point of picking the right NAICS codes is filtering the universe of opportunities down to what’s actually relevant for your business. SAM.gov lets you filter by NAICS, but you have to set up the searches manually and refresh them constantly. Miss a refresh and you miss the contract.

SAMstream filters by NAICS codes automatically based on your profile. It also filters by set-aside category, location, and budget range. And it pulls in state and local opportunities, not just federal. The 7-day trial is free if you want to see what your filtered opportunity feed actually looks like for your codes.

Want to keep learning first? How to Find Government Contracts as a Small Business [link] is the cornerstone guide.