Sigmatech, Inc. is hiring 20 to 25 people for its first office in Maryland. Based in Huntsville, Ala., the defense service provider opened its first Maryland office in May in Belcamp, near Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County.
The office started off with a staff of two but Brian Simmons, senior vice president for Washington, D.C., and APG operations, says he is looking to add system engineers, scientists and acquisiton experts by the end of this year.
“We are interested in supporting the U.S. Army at APG. What they do is different from Huntsville,” site of the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command at Redstone Arsenal and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Simmons says.
“Every other weapons program comes through APG at some point,” says Simmons. With future contracts in “R&D (research and development), test evaluation, foreign military sales and security assistance to allies at APG, my goal is for the office to pay for itself by the end of the year.”
Sigmatech opened its first office outside its Alabama headquarters last year in Crystal City, Va., to serve the northern Virginia-Washington, D.C., market. The private company has 320 employees, two-thirds of them in Huntsville, and $60 million in annual revenue.
Sigmatech’s APG office is located in the Water’s Edge Corporate Campus. “It is a bold move for us because of cutbacks, a tight market. But the timing is right for us,” says Simmons. “We need to grow and bolster our technical talent.”
Simmons says the company was particularly interested in APG because after the U.S. Department of Defense’s 2005 Base Realignment and Closure, several large military-defense agencies moved there.
“After Huntsville, APG is the next largest Army hub for weapons development and acquisition, new R&D, computers and intelligence,” he says.
Simmons expects to expand Sigmatech’s e-learning courses to future clients at APG. Based on a topic chosen by the client, the company designs a curriculum and develops a web-based instructional course. For example, one client was the United States Military Academy West Point, for which Sigmatech developed a course for its counter-terrorism center.
Source: Brian Simmons, Sigmatech, Inc.
Writer: Barbara Pash