ESN recognized for its continued rapid growth rate

ESN continually gets accolades for its steady growth. In July, Hispanic Business magazine named the Arlington-based company one of the 100 fastest-growing Hispanic businesses in the U.S. In 2012, ESN was included in the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S.

Retired U.S. Navy Commander Raymond Lopez Jr. started the company in 1995 with a single $25,000 purchase order from the U.S. Navy. Last year ESN’s revenue hit $38 million. “We have consistently grown 10 to 20 percent each year since 2001,” Lopez says, noting that he also has expanded his customer base from the Navy to other federal departments and agencies.

The company acronym stands for Engineering Services Network. It provides engineering and technology solutions for military and government customers. Services include professional management and systems engineering, cybersecurity, network design, data-center consolidation and systems development.

ESN has worked with the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Military Sealift Command, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Navy, Army, Air Force and Marine Corps.

The company’s 250 employees are based in Arlington and in field offices throughout the U.S. and overseas. “We have employees in 22 states,” Lopez says. “We also have people in Bahrain.”

Forty-two percent of the company’s employees are veterans, many of whom are stationed in the office in Chesapeake. Their work includes helping to develop the next generation of combat systems to improve the Navy’s operational effectiveness.

The company’s recent projects include moving the Navy Cyber Command from Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek in Virginia Beach to the former U.S. Joint Forces Command headquarters in Suffolk. In May ESN won a $24.5 million contract from the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific to provide technical support for voice communications. “We have worked together for years and this is an important extension of those earlier efforts,” Lopez says.

The Navy also awarded ESN a $7.7 million contract to provide combat systems engineering and systems integration support to the Naval Surface Warfare Center in California.
The company’s employee retention rate is considered high for the IT industry. In 2013 the rate was 90 percent, a figure that Lopez attributes to the company’s benefits and family atmosphere. “We start everybody with three weeks of paid vacation and there is no waiting period for our 401(k),” he says. “We have people that are smart and earnest. We need customer-centric folks because we are trying to help the war fighter or veteran.”