BALTIMORE, October 3, 2019 – Texas-based cyber company CNF Technologies Corp. will open a new office in Columbia this month.
The 3,000-square-foot space at 7110 Samuel Morse Dr. will be CNF’s fourth location — and first outside Texas — in the nation. The 14-year-old company is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, where it has three physical locations and is getting ready to open another. CNF has about 115 employees in total.
CNF already has about 10 Maryland employees, who are working remotely until the new office is move-in ready. The company plans to bring on another 15 by the end of 2020. Noting the impressiveness of the cyber talent pool in Maryland, CNF’s chief operating officer Steve Barish said the company is “looking for resumes” and will hiring for positions including software engineers and developers, hardware experts, project managers and more.
About 85% of the work CNF does is with the Department of Defense and federal intelligence community, Barish explained. It also plans to grow its much smaller portfolio of private customers over the next few years. CNF has previously projected about $30 million in revenue for 2019, up from $4.5 million in 2015.
CEO Roxanne Ramirez said the cyber firm has several contracts with organizations in Maryland, including some based Fort Meade military base in Anne Arundel County. CNF executives and project managers have been making frequent trips to the state in service of those customers, and ultimately the firm decided that setting up a permanent location here would be the best way to meet clients’ needs, and grow CNF’s customer base in the region, Ramirez said.
“We’re excited about this move. This is a really great opportunity for us to grow strategically in that market, and we hope to build a strong footprint,” she said. “It’s also a great market for talent. Maryland has a lot more folks with those necessary cyber skills we look for than we have [in San Antonio].”
The company is well poised for growth in the coming years, as one of five vendors nationwide chosen for a $950 million contract through the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. It recently opened a new 6,000-square-foot cyber lab in San Antonio, designed to support its global military operations, at which it plans to add about 160 jobs.