A defense contractor whose software and digital services support military and government clients, and which has launched work on a sophisticated Space Force satellite project along with three partners, has expanded to Colorado Springs and expects to add more than 500 high-paying jobs over the next two years.
Omni Federal, with employees in the Washington D.C., area, St. Louis, San Antonio, Texas, and Montgomery, Ala., said Wednesday that its new 8,300-square-foot office in the north-side InterQuest commercial and retail area will hire ground station, systems, software and network engineers, data scientists and security analysts, among others. Salaries will average $150,000 a year, according to the company, which announced its plans during a news conference at its new Springs office.
Founded in 2017 and with about 300 employees before its expansion, Omni chose to open in the Springs because of the aerospace, defense and technology industries’ strong presence in the Pikes Peak region and the ability to tap a deep labor pool of aerospace and tech professionals, military members and college graduates, company officials said. Omni also sought to be near its Air Force and Space Force clients.
Though not a so-called “legacy” defense contractor such as Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman, Omni has succeeded in winning contracts from Space Force and others who are giving a chance to “a new breed” of companies, Parag Thakker, Omni’s CEO, said in an interview before Wednesday’s news conference.
“We see a big opportunity for companies like us,” Thakker said.
Omni provides developers, solution architects, software engineers and cybersecurity and cloud specialists to software factories used by the Department of Defense in the production of software for military operations and systems, said Brad Kettner, the company’s vice president of space systems in Colorado Springs.
Omni’s Colorado Springs office will be dedicated to company operations, the establishment of federated ground networks that support satellite missions and Omni Labs — a research and development team, Kettner said.
The company has invested $400,000 in its new Colorado Springs office and related technology and expects to spend an additional $800,000 to support further development of its Omni Labs, the company said in a news release.
In January, Omni was chosen as the primary contractor on the first-phase development and integration of the Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution System or FORGE C2, a Space Force platform for satellite command and control, Kettner said. Infinity Systems, Freedom Space and Zivaro, all with offices in Colorado Springs, are subcontractors on the project.
“We’ve got a nice core group that’s working together on this project,” Kettner said.
Omni and its partners are confident they’ll be selected by the Defense Department to continue on the second phase of the FORGE project, he added.
The company said in the news release that it expects to secure $550 million in additional space, defense and technology sector contracts, which Thakker added would include the second phase of FORGE.
“There’s a huge pipeline of opportunities,” Thakker said. “There’s more coming.”
Those contracts, in turn, would have a ripple effect across other industries and would benefit local businesses, suppliers and service providers, the company said.
In addition to Colorado Springs, Omni Federal said it considered Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Orlando, Fla., and Huntsville, Ala., for expansion. The company added that it did not receive, state, city or county incentives.
In expanding to Colorado Springs, Omni will join more than 250 aerospace and defense companies that support national security missions, Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer, the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce & EDC’s president and CEO, said in the news release.
The company’s investment in the Springs shows the Pikes Peak region’s strength in space and defense, which draw from the area’s technology base, a highly skilled workforce and collaborate business efforts, Reeder Kleymeyer said.
Omni’s expansion is the latest in a series of Colorado Springs job announcements over the past two years. More than 4,200, high-wage jobs have been announced over that period by existing businesses and newcomers, who also plan to spend more than $2 billion on capital investments, according to those announcements.
