DoD SBIR Consulting and Proposal Writing

A DoD SBIR consultant helps a small business win a Department of Defense Small Business Innovation Research or STTR award by choosing the right published topic and turning the company's technical approach into the volumes DoD evaluates. We write those volumes for you from your engineering input: the technical volume, the cost volume, the supporting documents, and the transition case, then check the package against the component's instructions before you submit through the Defense SBIR/STTR Innovation Portal (DSIP). The Department now also styles itself the Department of War, and its official SBIR site uses that name.

What makes a DoD proposal different from NIH or NSF

You answer someone else's problem. NIH and NSF SBIR accept proposals on ideas the company chooses. DoD components (Army, Navy, Air Force, the Defense Health Agency, Special Operations Command and others) publish topics describing a capability they want, and your proposal is scored on how well it answers that topic. A strong idea aimed at a topic it only loosely fits usually loses to a narrower idea that fits exactly.

The award is usually a contract. Most DoD SBIR awards are contracts, so the proposal reads more like a bid: a defined Phase I objective, a statement of work, milestones, and a price.

Each component writes its own rules. The DoD-wide announcement sets the baseline, and each component's instructions take precedence for its topics. Technical volume page limits have ranged from 5 pages at Special Operations Command to 10 at the Navy to 20 at the Defense Logistics Agency in past cycles, and pages over the limit are not read. We work from the instructions for your specific topic, not from a generic template.

Transition is scored, not just commercialization. DoD wants to know how the technology reaches a military user: which program office or platform, what happens after Phase II, and whether a Phase III contract is plausible. A civilian go-to-market plan alone misses the question. Our guide to the SBIR commercialization plan covers the general form; DoD needs the military framing on top of it.

The pre-release window

Before a solicitation opens, DoD runs a pre-release period during which you may contact the technical point of contact named on a topic. Once the solicitation opens, direct contact ends and questions move to the written topic question and answer system in DSIP.

This is the most valuable stretch of a DoD cycle and the one first-time applicants most often skip. A short conversation can tell you what problem the author actually has, what has already been tried, and whether your approach interests them at all, before you spend weeks writing. We prepare the questions with you: what to ask, what not to ask, and how to read guarded answers.

What we write and check

Topic selection. We read the open topics against your technology and give you a short list ranked by fit, with the reasoning. If nothing fits this cycle, we tell you, and that advice is often worth more than a proposal.

Technical volume. The feasibility question Phase I must answer, the technical approach, the work plan and milestones, related work, key personnel, facilities, and the transition path, written to the component's evaluation criteria and page limit. Phase I exists to resolve a specific technical risk; proposals that describe general development instead of a feasibility question score poorly. See SBIR Phase I vs Phase II for what each stage has to prove.

Cost volume. Built in the Excel cost volume DSIP provides, with labor at the right level of effort, consultant and subcontract costs inside the work-share limits, and your indirect rates applied correctly. For SBIR Phase I, at least two-thirds of the research effort must be performed by your company; for Phase II, at least half.

Supporting documents. Letters of support, the foreign affiliation and funding source disclosures, required certifications, and anything else the component lists for the supporting documents volume. Foreign risk screening is now a hard gate: the 2026 reauthorization requires agencies to reject proposals that present a security risk or are tied to listed foreign entities.

Submission check. Page counts, formatting, required volumes, the Company Commercialization Report, and consistency between the technical volume, the cost volume and the cover sheet, before your company certifies and submits.

What you provide

The technical substance comes from your team: what the technology does, test data or prior results, the people who will do the work, and your rates. We turn that into the proposal, ask the questions a DoD evaluator will ask, and draft every section. Expect a few working sessions with your technical lead during drafting and one review round on the full package.

You also need these in place, and each takes longer than founders expect:

• SAM.gov registration with an active Unique Entity ID. See our guide to getting a Unique Entity ID through SAM.gov.
• SBIR.gov company registration and the company control ID it issues.
• A DSIP account for the people who will submit.
• Eligibility: majority United States ownership and control, and 500 or fewer employees including affiliates.

A proposal blocked by a pending registration is the most avoidable way to miss a DoD cycle, so registrations are the first thing we check.

Timing

DoD topics open on a published schedule and close firmly. Engage us before or early in pre-release if you want help with topic selection and author questions; a Phase I drafted after the solicitation opens can still be done well, but the conversation with the topic author is gone. Work on the proposal begins once the engagement is paid, so pre-release planning has to start before then. and we will tell you at scoping whether the remaining time is enough.

For the wider program across all agencies, see SBIR and STTR grant writing and how to write an SBIR proposal. If you already have a draft, a proposal review scores it against the topic before you submit.