Robert David, founder of Techsoft in Pensacola, has seen the company grow from a one-man shop to 63 employees. Photo credit: Michael Spooneybarger/Innovation Coast

Pensacola company Techsoft has won a contract that will have its technology experts dispatched to the North and South poles.

On Oct. 1, the company was hired to provide cybersecurity services for National Science Foundation facilities on both poles, according to Techsoft President Robert David.

The contract was awarded by the Space and Naval Warfare Office of Polar Programs, which provides engineering and logistics support for the scientists on the ice.

“It’s a one-year period of performance with two option years, so we should be providing support for the project into 2018,” David said. “The contract has a value of several million dollars over the next three years.”

The company’s cyber and information security support will include systems engineering, information security strategic planning, system security engineering, patch and vulnerability management, security control assessment planning and implementation and security incident response as well as risk management, project management and program logistics.

As Pensacola area economic development officials work to build and grow the region's niche in the cybersecurity industry, word of contracts like the one Techsoft received are important toward that end. Jobs in that industry tend to have higher-than-average wages and use the intellectual capacity that experts say is a hallmark of the information economy.

The Studer Community Institute's Pensacola Metro Dashboard.

Recruiting and maintaining them is important to increasing the Pensacola metro area's per capita income, labor force participation rate and number of residents with a college degree — all metrics in the
Studer Community Institute's Pensacola Metro Dashboard.

The dashboard, create din collaboration with the University of West Florida, is a snapshot of the community's economic, educational and social well-being.

Much of the work on the contract will be conducted in Pensacola, at Techsoft facilities in Charleston, S.C., and Denver, and at the National Science Foundation offices in Washington.

“We will have cybersecurity engineers who will be making the long and arduous trips to the remote Antarctic and Arctic installations at various times during our contract to perform security assessments, update security capabilities and train the on-site staff,” David said.

“While there are technical challenges of ensuring the information technologies being used remain secure, there also physical and psychological requirements our field engineers must meet before they can be authorized to make the journeys,” he said.

“Our people won’t be on site during the entire operational period, so will have to perform their critical support functions during the short window of opportunity they will have.”

The project will be handled by about 10 company employees.

“Most will be staffed by new hires with extensive cyber and information assurance experience,” David said. “Senior program and project management will be handled from our corporate headquarters here in Pensacola.”

Donovan Chau, executive director of Innovation Coast, praised Techsoft’s success in securing this contract.

“There is perennial competition for these types of federal contracts, and this shows that, once again, Techsoft is a winner,” Chau said.

“To have a Pensacola-based technology company on both poles is outstanding and a real testament to the growing technology community along Florida’s Gulf Coast. Defense companies and communities will be taking a closer look at the quality of companies here in Pensacola.”

Innovation Coast is an alliance of companies and institutions of higher education that works to promote and grow Pensacola-area tech and knowledge-based industries.

The poles contract represents just the latest growth for Techsoft, which was founded as a one-person shop in 1990. This year, the company has gone from 35 employees to 63, and is expecting to hire about 10 more in the immediate future. David expects the company to grow by another 10 percent in 2016.

“TECHSOFT has experienced significant growth this past year, which we attribute to a very successful bidding process on Department of Defense contracts,” David said.

“We have been very successful in responding to the Naval Education and Training Command requests for proposals this year. Much of our local hiring has been in the areas of instructional designers, instructional developers and graphics personnel to support Navy training development contracts we’ve been able to secure.”