Mr. Cardinale began his career as an infantry officer in the US Marine Corps and later served as an electronic countermeasures officer. After leaving active duty in 1981, he developed the training program for a newly commissioned Marine Corps Reserve electronic warfare squadron, and trained Electronic Countermeasures Officers in Whidbey Island, Washington.
 
In 1982 he moved to Northern Virginia as a staff engineer for a small business providing design and systems engineering support to Naval Air Systems Command and the Naval Research Laboratory, developing and testing infrared countermeasures (IRCM) and electronic countermeasures (ECM) systems for US Navy/Marine Corps and Army helicopters. He became Director of Engineering and later, Vice-president of Engineering, a position in which he served until 2004.  His areas of expertise were in infrared (IR) focal plane array systems for missile countermeasures, aircraft fire control radars, radar and IR countermeasures systems, IR Search and Track (IRST) systems, data links, aircraft data buses, and electro-optical sensor systems.  In 2004 he went to work at another small business as a Senior Systems Engineer for acoustic systems supporting US Navy and US Army programs.

In 2006, he left to work for the US Defense Intelligence Agency as a Technical Intelligence Officer, working on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) counter-proliferation systems, on forensics and biometrics collection systems for counter-terrorism, and on the development of ground and space sensor systems.
 
In 2012 he went to the OSD to lead the development of new capabilities in data security and biometrics, vehicle telematics, and RFID devices, from where he retired in January 2015.