Adam Rudo is the executive vice president and general manager of ManTech’s Intelligence Sector, leading the company’s charge to provide advanced secure products and cyber, analytics and IT solutions/services to the intelligence community.
In this role, he ensures overall mission commitment, program performance, business strategy and growth of the portfolio.
We asked Rudo to chat about his efforts leading ManTech’s growth in the vital intelligence market.
What were you and your team’s biggest achievements of 2022?
It starts with knowing that the customer considers ManTech a company that delivers on their key missions. That led to 2022 being an outstanding year for ManTech’s Intelligence Sector, marked by major contract wins for every one of our divisions.
While we can’t go into detail on specific customers, we can say that they include the largest members of the Intelligence Community ⏤ agencies whose primary mission is to safeguard national security. ManTech has supported many of them for years.
Our major 2022 contract wins with the IC in 2022 underscore the importance of this partnership now and in the years ahead.
Tell us a bit about that work. What services did you provide, and what does that demand say about the state of the IC market overall?
The contracts we won this past year include work in technical focus areas such as Cognitive Cyber, Mission and Enterprise IT, and Cloud Software Engineering. They provide additional ways for ManTech to provide value to our customers across a broad set of missions.
Our customers are facing challenges of increased complexity, and ManTech is poised to step in to address these needs.
What do these wins mean for your customers ⏤ and employees?
Our 100% dedication to their mission means everything to our customers and makes us a trusted partner of government. All those who work here share this commitment by continuously innovating to ensure our customers always have leading technology solutions that raise the bar on mission success.
Innovation, in this context, can be developing new cyber algorithms, implementing robotic process automation, or making IT processes more efficient, for example. Our goal is to provide value to improve outcomes and partner with our customers for the long term.
How do these wins ripple back to your employees?
The recent contract wins create more career opportunities for employees as we continue to grow the Intelligence Sector. I’m proud of how ManTech has created career paths for our employees who want to gain experience across a wide range of technologies and customer challenges, all within the context of national security.
In a very competitive industry, how do you attract and retain great talent?
The key draw is a culture that meets our gifted talent’s top priorities: career development via mentoring; advanced training programs; fully-paid tuition for advanced degrees in cyber, cloud, analytics & AI; and long-term stability. Whatever way markets swing, ManTech stays strong, elevates our market trajectory, and continues to pursue, hire and keep great talent.
Our people generally want a career, not just a job, and their greatest source of satisfaction comes from the opportunity to do important, meaningful work every day.
What’s the biggest challenge you face, and how do you address it?
On the topic of attracting and retaining talent, the IC as a whole is challenged when it comes to competing for skilled resources that would prefer to work remotely, versus in an office setting.
While government agencies and companies like ManTech have done quite a bit to enable remote work where possible, much of government contracting supporting the IC requires staff to be in various facilities full time. At ManTech we are advocating to our customers for flexibility of work location wherever feasible and secure, as well as providing our own opportunities for work location flexibility and work life balance as a whole.
And with the job instability in the commercial technology sector right now, our message of career growth and job security/flexibility is attracting talent to ManTech ⏤ including what we call “boomerangs” ⏤ employees who come back to ManTech after previously leaving for opportunities outside the IC.
On a personal note, what makes this work interesting / meaningful for you?
Actually, there are several reasons this work remains so meaningful to me.
First, I started my career as an engineer and was immediately attracted to the technical challenges faced by the IC. I’ve been supporting this community for almost 30 years ⏤ its mission gives me a sense of purpose ⏤ knowing the solution to the technical challenges has such benefit to our nation and allies.
And since I’ve been running and growing businesses, I’m fortunate enough to be able to help create jobs for others to do the same.