CMS grows office space as part of tech-minded hiring
Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Dr. Mehmet Oz (L), accompanied by Health and Human Services (HHS) Deputy Secretary nominee Chris Klomp (R), speaks during a news conference on fraud at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House Campus on September 22, 2026 in Washington, DC. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
The agency’s staffing plan emphasizes hiring program integrity and technology staff, according to its fiscal year 2027 congressional budget justification.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services opened a Salt Lake City satellite location with three employees in September as part of an effort to further expand its office space, according to an email obtained by Nextgov/FCW.
The agency broadened its DC footprint by over 25% this year and expanded capacity for more than two dozen staff at its San Francisco office following a renovation, the email added.
But CMS is also looking to expand its office space nationwide.
The agency is exploring additional space in Philadelphia, Chicago and New York. External recruiting is paused in all three cities but internal promotion opportunities are still available, the early October email said.
CMS is considering acquiring office space in Charleston, South Carolina and Nashville, Tennessee, a separate September message said.
CMS did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
After the Department of Government Efficiency’s culling of the federal workforce, CMS is now seeking to hire — with a focus on tech talent.
“With an emphasis on hiring program integrity and technology positions (e.g., software/hardware engineers, data scientist, artificial intelligence and machine learning experts), CMS has a plan to onboard staff that will be the in-house subject matter experts needed to raise our internal capabilities,” the agency wrote in its fiscal 2027 budget justification to Congress.
The Salt Lake City location, in particular, would support technology initiatives, such as modernizing Medicare claims processing systems, curtailing fraud and improving health data sharing, an agency spokesperson previously told Inside Health Policy.
CMS Deputy Administrator Kimberly Brandt told Nextgov/FCW at a March conference that the agency wanted to hire more high-skill workers in tech-heavy cities like Seattle, San Francisco and Boston.
“We've never aggressively targeted talent like that before,” Brandt said at the time. “We want to get both people who are already in their career, but also people who are just graduating.”
The hiring push comes after the agency lost a chunk of its workforce during DOGE’s heyday.
CMS lost over 900 employees in fiscal 2025, bringing its headcount down to 5,628, according to Office of Personnel Management data. The agency saw a slight staffing increase in fiscal 2026, bringing the total headcount to 5,702, OPM data show.