The CIA values all foreign language skills, and many of our positions allow you the opportunity to apply your language skills to help keep our country safe.
Our Foreign Language Incentive Program provides monetary bonuses to new and current employees with foreign language skills who meet proficiency requirements. Explore the drop down menu below to learn more about our various incentives, as well as to see a full list of languages that qualify for a foreign language incentive.
In order to rate a candidate or employee’s proficiency, we use the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR). Learn more about the ILR scale on our Foreign Language Proficiency Scale page, where you can accurately determine your language proficiency before you submit your resume via MyLINK.
View our foreign language career opportunities and submit your resume today.
This bonus is paid to new employees who meet the minimum proficiency requirements from a qualifying list of languages, work in a language-designated occupation and sign a continued service agreement with the CIA. New employees can qualify for this hiring bonus in more than one language.
This program is for Agency employees who possess and maintain language proficiency from a qualifying list of languages, regardless of their position. By sustaining qualifying proficiency levels, you can receive maintenance bonus pay in each biweekly paycheck – ranging from $75 to $250.
This program offers additional bonus compensation for employees who meet the Language Maintenance Program requirements and work in certain qualifying positions where it is necessary for you to regularly use your language skills. This biweekly bonus pay ranges from $75 to $400.
- Afrikaans
- Albanian
- Amharic
- Arabic
- Armenian
- Azerbaijani
- Baluchi
- Bengali
- Bosnian
- Bulgarian
- Burmese
- Cambodian (Khmer)
- Cebuano
- Chechen
- Chinese
- Croatian
- Czech
- Danish
- Dari
- Dutch
- Estonian
- Ewe
- Finnish
- Flemish
- French
- Georgian
- German
- Greek
- Gujarati
- Haitian Creole
- Hausa
- Hebrew
- Hindi
- Hungarian
- Igbo (Ibo)
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Javanese
- Kazakh
- Kirghiz
- Kissi
- Korean
- Kurdish
- Lao
- Latvian (Lettish)
- Lingala
- Lithuanian
- Macedonian
- Malay
- Malayalam
- Marathi
- Mongolian
- Nepali
- Norwegian
- Panjabi (Punjabi)
- Pashto
- Persian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Russian
- Serbian
- Sindhi
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Somali
- Spanish
- Swahili (Kiswahili)
- Swedish
- Tagalog
- Tajik
- Tamil
- Tausug
- Telugu
- Thai
- Tibetan
- Tigrinya
- Turkish
- Turkmen
- Uygur
- Ukrainian
- Urdu
- Uzbek
- Vietnamese
- Yoruba
- Zulu