Lockheed Martin adds over 1,000 jobs
Hiring spree comes amidst a series of contract wins
Frank St. John has a good problem on his hands at Lockheed Martin’s Orlando campus.
As the defense giant quickly grows its workforce here – having added more than 1,000 workers since summer 2017 – it has had to build more space to match.
The result is a $50 million, 250,000-square-foot facility set to debut this month. But even that building will be nearly at capacity when it opens.
“We can’t get that building up fast enough,” said St. John, executive vice president of the firm’s Missiles and Fire Control division. “Once it opens, it will be immediately full.”
“Lockheed employs more than 8,000 in Orlando, split between its Missiles and Fire Control and Rotary and Mission Systems divisions.”
The company’s growth has been directly tied to a series of large contracts it has won that requires a significant portion of the work to be done here.
“Those include a $900 million U.S. Air Force contract for tech related to the agency’s long-range missile program and work related to the U.S. military’s high-profile F-35 aircraft.”
“A lot of different moving parts have come together to create this overall growth,” St. John said. “A lot of these are tremendously exciting because they are competitions with some prime competitors.”
The company also landed a $3.5 billion deal for maintenance and support on 300,000 training aids, simulators and other devices.
The work from that deal has trickled down to a group of about 300 Central Florida-based subcontractors, helping support the defense industry’s growth here.
“To have the No. 1 defense contractor in our backyard is very significant,” said Elizabeth Burch, whose company Dignitas Technologies subcontracts on that training device deal. “It gives us the means to do a contract we would not have gotten normally.”
Dignitas, which develops software and other technology for the defense industry, has grown from seven employees 10 years ago to an expected 150-person workforce this year.
Burch said part of that growth relates to Lockheed Martin.
“If we can just support a small capacity for their large contract, it makes a huge impact on our business,” she said.
Lockheed Martin’s growth has been tied to its work on the highly lucrative and high-volume F-35 contract, which the company’s Central Florida divisions contribute components to.
The company last year delivered 91 aircraft to the military, with an expectation of another 131 this year.
But Lockheed has come under fire for cost overruns and delays, which resulted in criticism from President Donald Trump.
The company last summer dropped the price of the aircraft by about 5 percent in a new deal with the Department of Defense, which calls for 141 aircraft for $89.2 million eac.
As pressure intensifies, the company also faces its own internal challenges that come with a growing workforce.
Among them are an intense battle with other companies for talent, the logistics of onboarding the hundreds of new employees and keeping the company’s culture intact as it grows.
The effort to build its future workforce has led to Lockheed Martin partnering with local schools.
In November, the company granted $300,000 to Valencia College and $1.5 million to UCF to support programs that encourage building the STEM workforce. About 2,500 UCF alum work at Lockheed Martin.
“We have been active in building the pipeline,” said St. John, who said the company also regularly hosts local students at Engineering Week events. “One of our key things is our ability to attract talent.”
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