PAE’s former head named Amentum CEO

John Heller, the former CEO of Falls Church-based contractor PAE Inc., will serve as CEO of Germantown, Maryland-based aerospace defense contractor Amentum Services Inc., which purchased PAE earlier this month. Heller, who led PAE for seven years until March 2021, will take his new post effective March 28, Amentum announced Thursday.

”It is an honor to be asked to lead Amentum into the future,” Heller said in a statement. “I am extremely excited about the opportunity to work together with Amentum’s over 50,000 employees to deliver value to our customers in one of the largest and fastest growing service companies in our industry.”

John Vollmer, who has been Amentum’s CEO since January 2020, will continue with the company as chair of Amentum’s board of directors.

Before joining PAE, Heller served as senior vice president and chief operating officer of Engility Corp. Prior to that, he was president of the professional support services division of L-3 Communications Holdings. He had previously served as president and COO of Multimax, which Harris Corp. acquired in 2007, and then as CEO of Netco Inc.

Dallas-based infrastructure consulting company AECOM spun off its federal business arm on Feb. 1, 2020, forming Amentum. Post-acquisition of PAE, Amentum has about 57,000 employees across the seven continents. In November 2020, Amentum purchased McLean-based DynCorp International.