The defense contracting industry has a workforce problem that compounds year over year. The experienced professionals who built their careers inside government programs are aging out faster than new entrants can replace them. Commercial technology companies compete for the same STEM graduates and offer compensation packages that defense contractors struggle to match. Security clearances, which can take a year or longer to process, create onboarding gaps that active government programs can’t easily absorb.

Margarita Howard, founder and CEO of HX5, has navigated these pressures for years. Her company provides research and development, engineering, and mission operations support across more than 70 government locations for NASA and the Department of Defense. HX5’s traditional hiring approach prioritized professionals who arrived pre-cleared and mission-experienced — people who could contribute without a lengthy runway. That preference remains, but the pool that fits it is getting smaller.

What University Collaboration Actually Delivers

University partnerships have become one of HX5’s answers to that constraint. Howard described the results as unexpected: “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. Collaborating with universities on research initiatives has been very eye-opening and rewarding.”

The mechanism is direct. Research collaborations with academic institutions give HX5 early exposure to technologies moving through university labs before they’re widely adopted in the defense sector. Faculty and graduate students working at the edge of their fields bring current research to those partnerships rather than established methods. For a contractor whose clients need to stay ahead of technical developments, that early visibility matters.

The talent dimension follows naturally. “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,” Howard said. A graduate student who works alongside HX5 on a research project arrives at the formal hiring stage already familiar with the company’s government work, technical expectations, and operational context. That familiarity reduces the evaluation burden on both sides.

An Industry-Wide Response Taking Shape

HX5 is not alone in this direction. The National Defense Industry Association’s Vital Signs 2025 report found the defense workforce dropped from 3 million in 1985 to 1.1 million by 2021, with 53% of respondents reporting difficulty finding qualified STEM workers. The Semiconductor Industry Association projects a national deficit of approximately 1.4 million STEM professionals by 2030.

The DoD’s 2024 renewal of its Defense STEM Education Consortium — a 10-year, $190 million commitment managed by RTI International — reached over 208,000 students in its first three years. The University of Florida’s FINS Talent Pipeline program now pre-screens engineering undergraduates for national security careers years before they enter the job market. Margarita Howard’s approach at HX5 draws on the same logic at a scale suited to a mid-tier contractor: direct research collaboration that generates both technology insight and candidate relationships from a single partnership.