HX5’s status as a service-disabled veteran-owned and women-owned small business carries weight for the transitioning service members who join the company through its fellowship program, a signal that leadership understands military culture from the inside. CEO Margarita Howard, herself a service-disabled veteran, has built that understanding into how the defense and aerospace contractor approaches hiring.
Since 2021, HX5 has hosted eight fellows through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Hiring Our Heroes Corporate Fellowship Program, maintaining a pace of two fellows each year. The program, a Department of Defense SkillBridge initiative, lets active-duty members work with civilian employers during their final 180 days of service while keeping military pay and benefits.
Bridging Military and Contractor Work
HX5 supports Department of Defense and NASA missions including advanced weapons research, production readiness reviews for sensor systems, and modeling and simulation work for defense and space programs. Operating across more than 20 states and 70 government locations with roughly 1,000 employees, the company relies heavily on staff who already hold security clearances and understand government operational environments.
Howard describes this alignment as valuable for both the company and the veterans it hires. “The work we do is very exciting. Some of it is not being done anywhere else in the world,” she says, noting that meaningful work often matters as much as compensation for retaining talent.
For fellows arriving with engineering or technical backgrounds from active duty, HX5 offers a chance to continue similar work from a contractor’s perspective rather than starting over in an unfamiliar field. Margarita Howard has pointed to this continuity as central to what makes the fellowship valuable, allowing veterans to apply specialized training while learning how contractors interface with government customers, a skill set she notes differs meaningfully from experience gained in the commercial world.
Howard also points to the broader pool of talent HX5 draws from once fellows complete the program, noting that many go on to full-time roles supporting the same defense and space missions they trained on during the fellowship. That continuity, she says, benefits HX5 as much as it benefits the veterans themselves, since fellows arrive already familiar with the company’s clearance requirements and mission priorities. The arrangement gives HX5 a steady source of qualified candidates while giving service members a structured, gradual way to test out contracting work before committing to it long term. Read this article for additional information.
Find more information about Howard on https://dataconomy.com/2026/02/23/infrastructure-as-competitive-advantage-margarita-howards-early-investment-philosophy-at-hx5/
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