Margarita Howard has a specific term for the professionals HX5 most needs: “purple unicorns.” The description covers STEM specialists who combine advanced technical credentials with active security clearances and hands-on experience inside DoD or NASA programs. That combination is uncommon. And according to the National Defense Industry Association’s Vital Signs 2025 report, the industry’s talent base has contracted sharply — from 3 million workers in 1985 to 1.1 million by 2021. Fifty-three percent of companies surveyed described finding STEM workers as somewhat or very difficult.

HX5, which Howard founded and leads as CEO, operates across more than 70 government locations providing research and development, engineering, and mission operations support. The company has long favored experienced hires who arrive already cleared and familiar with agency environments. Long tenure among the workforce reflects that investment: many employees have stayed with HX5 for a decade or more, some nearing 15 years.

Universities as an Unexpected Answer

Given HX5’s historically narrow hiring criteria, Howard’s own account of how academic partnerships developed is notable. “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,” she said. “Collaborating with universities on research initiatives has been very eye-opening and rewarding.”

The value arrives in two forms from one relationship. First, research collaborations give HX5 early exposure to technologies still in development at university labs — AI tools, advanced engineering methods, new materials — before those innovations reach standard practice in the defense sector. Faculty and graduate students working at current research frontiers bring perspectives that internal teams focused on active contracts rarely have time to develop.

“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. That second return — the talent pipeline — works because familiarity compresses the hiring process. A graduate student who has contributed to a joint research project with HX5 is not a traditional experienced hire, but neither are they a stranger to the company’s technical environment or government work context.

Industry Infrastructure Growing Around the Same Problem

HX5’s approach fits inside a broader industry movement. The Department of Defense renewed its Defense STEM Education Consortium in 2024 as a 10-year, $190 million cooperative agreement through RTI International — a program that had already reached more than 208,000 students and nearly 9,000 educators in its first three years. The University of Florida’s FINS Talent Pipeline program has begun pre-screening engineering undergraduates for national security employment, providing clearance preparation and contractor connections well ahead of graduation.

Large primes like Lockheed Martin have pursued formal university recruitment for years; one company executive acknowledged that as many as 35% of its engineering workforce could retire within a few years, making academic pipelines a structural requirement. Margarita Howard’s model at HX5 is leaner — direct research engagement rather than campus-wide recruitment infrastructure — but it targets the same underlying gap. The Semiconductor Industry Association projects a deficit of approximately 1.4 million technicians, computer scientists, and engineers in the United States by 2030, a number that leaves no room for contractors to wait for the experienced pool to replenish itself.