E-Newsletter

May 11, 2023, E-News: Dev Technology Group to Expand Operations in Fairfax County + Weekly Business News Digest

Dev Technology Group to Expand Operations in Fairfax County, Creating 90 New Jobs

Dev Technology Group, an information technology services company delivering mission-critical applications and systems to the federal government, will invest $366,000 to expand in Fairfax County, according to an announcement by Governor Glenn Youngkin. Due to a substantial increase in demand for its services, the company is investing in 10,000 square feet of new office space to accommodate additional IT and software personnel. The project will create 90 new jobs.

“As a federal contractor, Dev Technology has selected to continue its growth in Fairfax County due to the proximity of clients and access to highly skilled employees, including veterans,” said Kendall Holbrook, CEO of Dev Technology. “In addition, Northern Virginia is a diverse and inclusive community that allows us to attract and retain people of all backgrounds, which ultimately makes our company stronger and more resilient.” 

Founded in 1998, Dev Technology Group delivers information technology services and solutions that enable government missions. The company’s work supports multiple agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Army National Guard, Army Corps of Engineers, Defense’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, the United States Geological Survey, DARPA, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and others. Dev Technology specializes in full stack Agile development and DevSecOps, cloud native solutions, IT and legacy modernization and migration, data management and analytics, artificial intelligence/machine learning, low code/no code and rapid delivery, and biometrics and identity management.

“Congratulations to Dev Technology Group on their office expansion in Fairfax County,” said Victor Hoskins, president and CEO of Fairfax County Economic Development Authority (FCEDA). “We applaud Dev Technology for their investment and plan of hiring 90 new information technology and software employees.”

Dev Technology has been named a Washington Post Top Workplace for the past 9 consecutive years, a Top Workplaces USA recipient for the past two years since the inception of the program, and an AnitaB.org Top Company for Women Technologists in 2021 and 2022. Dev Technology has a robust Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) strategy which is focused on ensuring a respectful, inclusive, safe work culture and environment through improving the recruitment, hiring, promotion, and retention of a workforce that represents the United States, building and sustaining an inclusive work culture, and increasing opportunities for veterans, underrepresented minorities, women, and people with disabilities. Dev Technology supports several community organizations through their DevGivesBack program, including Cornerstones, After-School All-Stars, and Northern Virginia Family Services.

“Thank you to Dev Technology for choosing to continue to grow right here in Fairfax County,” said Jeffrey C. McKay, Chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. “I’m proud of all the work we have done as a community to keep Fairfax County the kind of diverse and vibrant community that fosters this kind of economic growth.”

Fairfax County Economic Development Authority collaborated with the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) to secure the project for Fairfax County and Virginia. VEDP will support Dev Technology’s job creation through the Virginia Jobs Investment Program (VJIP), which provides consultative services and funding to companies creating new jobs in order to support employee recruitment and training activities. As a business incentive supporting economic development, VJIP reduces the human resource costs of new and expanding companies.

“Dev Technology Group is a Virginia success story that bolsters our booming IT industry while providing critical services for the government and 21st-century jobs for civilians and veterans,” said Governor Glenn Youngkin. “We are proud to see a longstanding corporate partner benefit from the Commonwealth’s diverse, world-class technology talent that catalyzes growth.”

Learn more about Dev Technology Group at https://devtechnology.com.


Matchbox McLean and Big Buns Damn Good Burgers are Open for Business!

Warren Thompson, President and Chairman, Thompson Hospitality, cuts a ribbon to celebrate the grand opening of Matchbox McLean and Big Buns Damn Good Burgers. (FCEDA photo)

A ribbon-cutting event was held on April 26 to celebrate the grand opening of Matchbox McLean and Big Buns Damn Good Burgers, located side-by-side on Chain Bridge Road in downtown McLean. A crowd gathered to hear short speeches by Warren Thompson. President and Chairman, Thompson Hospitality; Dranesville District Supervisor John Foust, Fairfax County Board of Supervisors; Tysons Regional Chamber of Commerce Chairman Andrew Clark; and Fairfax County Economic Development Authority Director of Diversity Business Investment and Entrepreneurship Karen Smaw.

Matchbox and Big Buns Damn Good Burgers are owned by Reston-based Thompson Hospitality, the largest minority-owned food service, and one of the largest retail food and facilities management companies in the country. Warren Thompson, the president and chairman of Thompson Hospitality, started the company in 1992 through the purchase of 31 Bob’s Big Boys restaurants. He expanded the company’s interests into the contract food service arena, and in 1997, created Thompson Hospitality Services, by forging a strategic partnership with Compass Group, the world’s largest food service company. Today, Thompson Hospitality has a presence in more than 45 states and four foreign countries, while maintaining its roots in Fairfax County.

“I would like to extend my congratulations to Warren Thompson – and to all of his team at Thompson Hospitality for the opening of this new Matchbox and Big Buns location,” said Smaw at the event. “McLean is Matchbox’s 11th location and Big Bun’s 10th location in the DMV and both brands will continue to grow in the coming years. We applaud Thompson Hospitality for giving back to the community and Warren Thompson for being a pillar of entrepreneurial success in Fairfax County.”


Employer Nominations Sought for Virginia Intern Day

To commemorate Virginia Intern Day on Thursday, July 27, 2023, the Commonwealth seeks to recognize the “Top Virginia Employers for Interns” via a social media event. Please complete and submit this nomination form (one per employer) by June 15, 2023 so that your business or organization can be considered for this distinction.

The social media event, to be held on July 27, 2023, will showcase the top employers, their interns and internship programs, garnering social media attention from the public as well as from potential internship candidates. Historically, Intern Day (the last Thursday in July) trends number one across social media platforms. The event will also highlight Virginia interns and higher education partners that facilitate the internships.

All employers offering internships, regardless of size and sector, are encouraged to submit a nomination form. The nomination form should take 5 to 10 minutes to complete. For more details and ways to celebrate Virginia Intern Day, please click here.


Weekly Business News Digest

Chantilly — the perfect space industry sweet spot: The Commercial Space Office, led by Col. Richard Kniseley, will replace the Commercial Services Office, which was established just a year ago. The organization will bring together several other initiatives, including SpaceWERX — the service’s technology hub — and Space Systems Command’s Front Door, an online portal companies can use to connect with the acquisition community. “It was officially stood up [in April], and I’ve already started aligning the processes and the offices. The actual headquarters for the Commercial Space Office will be in Chantilly, Va.,” said Col. Kniseley to C4ISR. “In fact, in June, we’re opening up our Commercial Collaboration Center in Chantilly, and it’s this perfect sweet spot to have it because it’s right next to the National Reconnaissance Office. It’s right near the Space Development Agency, you have NASA nearby along with other mission partners. But also it’s in a good sweet spot of industry as well.”

New street: Comstock Holding Companies signed a 10,200 square foot lease agreement with Babel Street, an AI data-to-knowledge company, for 1900 Reston Metro Plaza, according to Yahoo Finance. Office leasing at Reston Station accelerated in 2019, sparked by the announcement of Google’s relocation of its regional HQ to the development, which now covers more than 80 acres spanning the Dulles Toll Road and surrounding the Wiehle-Reston East Metro Station. With Phase II of development currently underway, the rapidly expanding neighborhood is already home to the corporate and regional headquarters of Google, ICF Global, Spotify, Qualtrics, Rolls-Royce of North America, Kimley Horn, TransUnion, and others. “We are thrilled to welcome Babel Street to our roster of tech and IT security office tenants at Reston Station,” said Timothy Steffan, Chief Operating Officer for Comstock. “Having recently signed several new retail and experiential brands including VIDA Fitness, Puttshack, and Ebbitt House, the first ever expansion of the iconic Old Ebbitt Grill in Washington, D.C., we continue activating the Reston Station neighborhood to be a dynamic mixed-used and transit-oriented neighborhood that provides exciting dining, fitness, and entertainment options for our growing list of corporate office tenants and residents alike.”

Tech jobs available: Defense firms are jumping into new talent pool: laid-off tech workers, The Hill reported. Recruiters are looking for experienced software engineers, cybersecurity experts and other high-skilled workers whose skills easily translate to defense technology. “For decades, the best and brightest in engineering weren’t always keen to enter the defense space,” said Andrew Wargofchik, a spokesperson for defense tech firm Epirus, which bases its East Coast headquarters in Tysons, noting his company grew by 36 percent last year. But now, the layoffs — combined with heightened global tensions — appear to be shifting the perspective for some tech workers. Wargofchik added it was “undeniable that current events, especially the war in Ukraine, are inspiring the next generation of tech leaders to pursue a career in the defense space to make an impact in the global defense of democracy.”

More Epirus news: Torrance, California-headquartered Epirus, which bases its East Coast HQ in Tysons, recently demonstrated the effectiveness of using powerful bursts of high-power microwave energy to bring down large numbers of drones to protect our soldiers from drone swarm on a battlefield, Fast Company reported. “We are disrupting the status-quo with a software-defined approach to power management,” said Epirus CEO Ken Bedingfield, “and high-power microwave is just the beginning.” The underlying technology has enormous potential in commercial applications—from increasing energy and operational efficiency to reducing carbon footprints—and earned Epirus a spot on Fast Company’s 2023 list of the world’s Most Innovative Companies.

Autonomous Blue Whale: Israel Aerospace Industries, which has its U.S. headquarters in Herndon, revealed last week that it has been developing its first large autonomous underwater vehicle, dubbed BlueWhale, which can gather covert intelligence and detect enemy threats, Times of Israel reported. According to IAI, the unmanned submarine has already conducted thousands of hours of submerged and autonomous operations. The firm said BlueWhale uses radar and electro-optical systems to detect sea and coastal targets. It is also equipped with sonar capabilities to gather intelligence, detect manned and unmanned submarines, and map out naval mines. Intelligence is then relayed in real-time to a designated command center via a dedicated broadband-secured satellite channel. Electrical power from the submarine’s battery bank can sustain continuous operation for two to four weeks, IAI said, adding that it can be transported in a 40-foot shipping container.

Data encryption solutions: Reston-based Science Applications International Corp. has released a new encrypted query analytics and data retrieval tool called EQADR, ExecutiveGov reported. Created to provide secure and efficient data search and retrieval, EQADR offers modern, cryptographic, cross-boundary data search, retrieval and analytics. Andy Henson, vice president of innovation at SAIC, said that agencies depend on data to execute their missions in a secure space. “We are providing our customers with data encryption solutions to help them reach the next phase of their digital transformation journey. SAIC’s EQADR delivers on providing security and performance to accelerate data-driven decision-making,” said Henson.

AI connection: Tysons-based Booz Allen Hamilton’s corporate venture capital unit, has invested in San Francisco-based Credo AI, an artificial intelligence ethics-focused organization, reported ExecutiveBiz. The partnership will enable the former to more efficiently integrate responsible AI using the latter’s governance software platform to accelerate the implementation of new federal and agency-specific AI standards. “Collectively with Credo AI, we have a unique opportunity to continue to safely, securely and fairly harness the transformative power of AI for our clients’ success by operationalizing responsible AI into the entire lifecycle of AI model development, testing, deployment and monitoring,” said John Larson, executive vice president and Booz Allen’s AI business lead.

Seizing a crucial opportunity: Westminster, Colorado-based Maxar Technologies, which has Chantilly and Herndon locations, is set to deliver in early 2024 the first of 16 satellite buses ordered by Melbourne, Florida-based L3Harris, which has locations in Fairfax County, for a military constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO) run by the U.S. Space Development Agency, SpaceNews reported. L3Harris is the first customer for Maxar’s newly designed small satellite bus, tailored for the megaconstellation market. The bus is now offered to other defense contractors competing for SDA satellite contracts. Maxar President and CEO Daniel Jablonsky said the company is trying to seize a crucial opportunity created by SDA’s large LEO constellation — which includes a Transport Layer of satellite for communications and a Tracking Layer for missile detection.

Monitoring wildfires via satellite: The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has awarded a contract to Tysons-based Spire Global subsidiary ExactEarth, which is based in Canada, to deliver preparatory work for implementation phases of a wildfire monitoring satellite. The contract is the initial step towards CSA’s planned WildFireSat mission, which aims to monitor all active wildfires in Canada from space on a daily basis to support wildfire management, provide Canadians with more precise information on smoke and air quality conditions, and more accurately measure the carbon emitted by wildfires. Spire will partner with Germany-based Ororatech, a space-based thermal intelligence company, for the contract, reported GISuser.

Startup launch: Tysons-based digital identity company Trua launched from stealth this week as it emerged from parent company Endera, both founded by Raj Ananthanpillai, technical.ly reported. Trua is a verified identity product for consumers that aims to reduce the amount that people need to share private info online. Trua legally separated from Endera in January 2023. Ananthanpillai remains CEO of the 12-person startup as well as Endera and self-funded both companies. Trua, Ananthanpillai said, is blockchain-based, so user information is codified and put into a blockchain ledger and only macro-information is passed around during the verification process. It also embedded facial comparison technology, multifactor authentication and data encryption. Following the launch, Ananthanpillai hopes to raise anywhere from $10 to $15 million later this year. It’s part of a general growth plan for Trua, which includes hiring a “growth executive” to expand the startup.

AI’s potential to tackle problems: Tysons and Bedford, Mass.-based MITRE has joined Carnegie Mellon University’s new artificial intelligence-focused multidisciplinary research coalition. Funded by a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the AI Institute for Societal Decision Making aims to boost responses to a variety of societal concerns using human-centric AI technologies. “We believe in the potential for AI to help us tackle hard problems from new drug discovery, to climate change mitigation, to national security challenges,” said Douglas Robbins, vice president of engineering and prototyping at MITRE. ExecutiveGov has more.

Fast-track cybersecurity certificate: Northern Virginia Community College and Google announced a partnership to offer a certificate in cybersecurity, InsideNoVa reported. The certificate can be completed online in under six months of part-time study with no degree or experience required, according to a news release. Residents can take the certificate through the Virginia Ready Initiative, a nonprofit formed in response to the pandemic to retrain employees to work in high-demand fields. Google’s cybersecurity certificate will prepare students for entry-level roles by training them to identify common cyber risks, threats and vulnerabilities, as well as how to mitigate them by protecting networks, devices, people and data from unauthorized access and cyber-attacks. To connect graduates directly to jobs, the Google Career Certificates program includes an employer consortium of more than 150 companies — including American Express, Colgate-Palmolive, T-Mobile, Walmart and Google — that hire in the certificate fields.

Done deal: Reston-based ASRC Federal Holding Co. closed its $350 million cash purchase of the logistics and supply chain management unit of Reston federal contractor SAIC, according to Washington Business Journal. ASRC Federal said it gains 240 employees with the deal. The newly acquired unit provides tech-enabled supply chain management and logistics solutions for the Defense Logistics Agency, an arm of the Department of Defense.

Advisory appointees: Herndon-based Hawkeye 360 has named to its advisory board class of 2023: John Abizaid, a retired U.S. Army general; Kari Bingen, former deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence; Jim Cooper, former representative for Tennessee; and M. Sanjayan; CEO of Conservation International. The four new appointees will join Hawkeye 360’s 18-member board to contribute diverse expertise. Hawkeye 360 CEO John Serafini said the four individuals’ extensive experience spanning both government and non-profit sectors will play an essential role in enhancing the company’s radio frequency-sensing satellite constellation capabilities, according to ExecutiveBiz.


Contract Wins

Koniag Government Services (Chantilly) subsidiary Kadiak (Alaska) will help the Indian Health Service manage information technology modernization efforts under an $83 million contract. ExecutiveBiz


FCEDA Hosted and Sponsored Events

May 23 — Digital Transformation Community Spring Mixer. Northern Virginia Technology Council’s Digital Transformation Community of Interest is hosting a networking mixer. Come celebrate digital transformation and meet industry peers from our vibrant tech community. Light appetizers and drinks will be served. This event is open to both NVTC members and non-members. Click here to register.

May 25 — Celebrating Asian Pacific American Heritage Month: A Focus on Global Business. The Export-Import Bank of the United States Minority and Women Owned Business (EXIM MWOB) Outreach Group, in partnership with the Asian American Chamber of Commerce and the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, invites you to attend: “Celebrating Asian Pacific American Heritage Month: A Focus on Global Business” webinar on May 25, 2023, at 2pm EDT. The event aims to educate business owners about EXIM’s financing tools and services, as well as strategies for successful exporting. The MWOB office works closely with other government agencies and business development associations to promote EXIM financing and create export opportunities for U.S. businesses. Click here to register.

September 26-28 – Call for Experts: Connecting the Global Quantum Ecosystem. Quantum World Congress 2023 will occur September 26-28 in the Greater Washington region. It will once again bring together leaders from across the quantum ecosystem around the globe to address pressing challenges and emerging trends and share insights that help to accelerate and commercialize quantum technologies. Programming will take many forms — from presentations and panels to fireside chats and networking sessions. QWC will enable relevant, timely, and industry-leading information sharing and relationship building across these formats to foster a responsible environment for quantum growth. If your expertise and experience position you as a thought leader, then you are invited to complete the speaker application. Please also review the sponsorship packages to explore ways to showcase your brand at the event. Click here for more information.


FCEDA is Here to Help Your Business Thrive

Fairfax County EDA is here to connect businesses of all kinds to resources and information. For direct assistance, email the FCEDA at info@fceda.org, or call 703-790-0600 to leave a voice message for our staff. And click here for resources available in the other nine jurisdictions that make up the Northern Virginia Economic Development Alliance.