January 21 – dbeard @dominionpost.com MORGANTOWN – Senator Shelley Moore Capito came to town Wednesday afternoon and toured the Leidos software center.
Leidos – pronounced ly-dose – is a software developer who has contracts with federal agencies such as the FBI, the Department of Energy and the Department of War. More than 300 people work there.
The 30,000-square-foot Morgantown Software Center has been in north-central West Virginia for 30 years and sits atop a hill above Morgantown Mall and University Town Center. Leidos also operates in Clarksburg and Bridgeport, and at the National Energy Technology Laboratory.
A common theme of the day was that a West Virginia company, with West Virginia employees, is having a global impact.
“It’s really fun to think that all this global technology comes from here,” Capito said. “There’s a lot of talent out here from West Virginia.”
She noted that Leido has cooperative agreements with Fairmont State and WVU, and has a cybersecurity classroom at WVU. Leidos brings in interns, trains them and hires them.
Ben Young, site program manager at Leidos, explained how the center has been designed, with a collaborative floor plan that allows cross-team working and places senior staff alongside interns, “and grows a culture around that.”
Many of the workers are West Virginians who want to stay home, she said. ‘They want to be part of the new economy, the next economy, a job where you know the future is there, and they find that exciting.
Wherever you go in the world, there is a footprint of something a West Virginian did. That is a tribute to Leidos and the educational institutions they work with.”
Several Leidos leaders described some of the company’s contracts and what they mean for the federal government.
For example, NGI is a biometric identification program used by the FBI in conjunction with federal, state, and tribal authorities. Leidos’ work has reduced the time it takes to get a match from weeks – under the old paper mail system of decades ago – to hours and now to seconds.
Not only can it identify criminals, but it can also help prevent crime through things like background checks on potential adoptive parents, Capito found.
ProSight is a software platform that integrates security research equipment, threat detection algorithms, and third-party data to secure airports and other organizations with critical security needs.
David Jones is program manager for DOW ABIS – an automated biometric identification system for the War Department. It serves the intelligence community, Border Patrol and various agencies. It provides identity information and allows agencies to take action against potential threats, reaching across the globe.
Jones said he grew up in Ravenswood, went to college out of state, but returned to work at Leidos.
“It’s fantastic to be able to have a meaningful and rewarding career in IT, in software engineering, in cybersecurity, here where it belongs,” he said. And the work spans the globe. “It’s all happening here: the developers, the testers, the analysts of this system that generates everything that’s done here in West Virginia, and that’s amazing when you think about it.”
