New entrants, adaptation shape GovCon in Northern Virginia
Gettyimages.com / Gagarych
By
Ross Wilkers
The industry's future trajectory, and that of the overall Northern Virginia region, still depends on talent for tech-intensive fields in government and non-government markets.
When launching its NOVA Roadmap in July 2025, the Northern Virginia Chamber acknowledged the upheaval across the federal contracting ecosystem in light of government workforce reductions and subsequent contractor job losses.
Now in the fall of 2026, we can start asking: How has the GovCon industry fared in these past 18 months unlike anything it has experienced for quite some time?
Julie Coons, CEO of the NOVA Chamber, described the industry as “incredibly adaptable” amid a period where contractors of all shapes and sizes were challenged by the government to emphasize speed and agility in their tech deliveries.
“The headlines would tell us that there are new market participants from parts of this country that were not as active in government contracting,” Coons told us. “It is changing the industry as a whole, and that means it's expanding and adapting to changes in how federal procurement is approached in this administration.”
As Coons pointed out, one of the biggest shifts many in industry had to make was increasing their ability to work with established commercial tech offerings that can be adapted for federal mission sets.
Indeed: substantially all of the federal government’s largest systems integrators maintain networks of partnerships with commercial software names, while some of these relationships also include pledges to use the products for future projects.
“One of the things I heard early on from a number of members and participants in the industry is that they got it,” Coons said of the shift. “They had identified those solutions, they were adapting them and working with their partners along the timelines they have now.”
No conversation about GovCon, or really any other tech-intensive industry, can take place without going over the topic of talent.
The NOVA Roadmap’s first goal of reinventing the region’s economy contains an action item that accounts for all the public sector job losses: prepare the workforce with the skills to succeed in the new economy where digital infrastructure underpins everything in every industry.
Coons cited artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cybersecurity and commercial space as examples of growing industries with companies that are in both government and non-government markets.
Businesses need to be able to establish themselves quickly and keep moving forward in order to be “destination of choice” employers in the region, Coons said.
That includes “making sure that we work with our academic partners to make sure that the workforce here is job-ready for the kinds of emerging skills that our government contractors need,” Coons added.