Margarita Howard built HX5 on a hiring philosophy that has served the company well for two decades: recruit people who have already worked inside NASA or the Department of Defense. Not in comparable commercial roles. Not in adjacent industries. Inside those agencies, where they absorbed the procurement culture, security protocols, and operational tempo that define government contract work.

“Experience in their respective fields, while supporting these agencies’ respective programs and missions, is very different from experience gained from working in the commercial world,” Howard, HX5’s founder and CEO, has said. For a company providing embedded technical support across research and development, engineering, and mission operations at over 70 government locations, a hire who already understands that environment can contribute on day one. One who doesn’t may spend the better part of a year getting up to speed, assuming they clear the security process at all.

An Unexpected Source of Value

Given that grounding, Howard was candid about her surprise when academic institutions became one of HX5’s more productive partnerships. “One of our most valuable partnerships, that we just did not know about or expect such wonderful results to come about, has been with academic institutions,” she said. “Collaborating with universities on research initiatives has been very eye-opening and rewarding.”

The appeal is twofold. Research collaborations give HX5 early visibility into emerging technologies before they filter into mainstream defense adoption. Faculty and graduate students bring current research rather than established practice, exposing the company to AI applications, new engineering methodologies, and advanced materials ahead of the curve. That exposure carries independent value, separate from any hiring result.

The second return is talent. Graduate students who contribute to research projects with HX5 arrive at the hiring stage with some knowledge of the company’s work, its technical standards, and its government client environment. They are not the experienced, pre-cleared hires Howard has traditionally prioritized, but they are not cold candidates either. The research relationship compresses the evaluation process and, in some cases, allows for short-term project contributions before a formal offer is made.

A Structural Problem Driving a Strategic Shift

The broader workforce math makes this pivot understandable. The National Defense Industry Association’s Vital Signs 2025 report found that the defense sector employed 3 million workers in 1985 and 1.1 million by 2021. Fifty-three percent of respondents reported difficulty finding STEM workers, and the same share identified competition with the commercial sector as a top barrier to filling vacancies. The Semiconductor Industry Association projects a deficit of roughly 1.4 million technicians, computer scientists, and engineers in the United States by 2030.

For Margarita Howard, university partnerships offer HX5 a practical path around those constraints. “Collaborating with the universities on research initiatives has helped us stay ahead of the emerging technologies, and also foster a pipeline of talented graduates that may come to work for us or contribute on a short-term basis,” she said.