The first time Andy Henson watched technology bend the tempo of real-world conflict, he was standing inside a system that hadn’t been built for speed. Europe was back at war, and the machinery of command was creaking under the weight of decisions that couldn’t wait.
Henson was there on loan from the Defense Intelligence Agency, embedded at U.S. European Command as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began. He worked on the watch floor, pushing new technology into live operations as Europe’s command infrastructure relearned how to function under wartime pressure.
Years later, Henson is still chasing the same challenge: making technology work inside government, not just look good on paper.
At SAIC, that means starting with the unglamorous parts: aging infrastructure, slow processes and organizations that are typically built to avoid risk, even when the mission demands speed.
“We don’t have the three-year life cycle anymore,” he said. “We’re going to develop something, field something, see if it works and iterate quickly.”
A Builder’s Instinct
Solving problems runs in Henson’s DNA. Both his parents were engineers.
“When I would dream of something, we would go in the garage and build it, whether it be rockets or airplanes,” he said.
Alongside that maker culture, he grew up steeped in government service. He’s a third-generation government contractor. That sense of purpose came into focus in his teens after a conversation with his grandfather.
“He was telling me about how he worked on the spacesuits for the Apollo missions,” Henson said. “I thought, ‘Wow, what an incredible legacy it is to have put your hands and your head toward something so legendary.’”
By college, Henson was already working in GovCon. He took an entry-level geospatial role in his junior year and worked full time while carrying a full course load.
A few years later, Henson moved into counter-IED work. He was drawn to it because it put technology in direct service of saving lives. He wanted to figure out how engineering could be applied to defeating improvised explosive devices killing U.S. troops.
For him, it was a concrete example of technology applied to a hard problem with real consequences.
“I wanted to spend some time trying to save lives,” Henson said. “How could I invent something that can defeat improvised explosive devices that are killing our troops?”
Finding His People
Today, Henson runs a $615 million portfolio inside SAIC’s Air Force, Space and Intelligence business group. The move from research and development to owning outcomes changed how he approaches innovation. Ideas only matter if they hold up in real operations.
“I’m responsible for the outcomes of those R&D efforts,” Henson said. “We’re taking prototypes we already had and aligning innovation with accountability for delivering impactful results for our customers.”
A core focus is closing the gap between research and operations.
“We can’t have R&D off in a corner,” he said. “We’ve got to have it actively in real mission spaces with real data, securely making a difference quickly.”
Henson joined SAIC for the people he’d gotten to know overseas. He had worked alongside the company’s engineers on live mission efforts and came to trust how they approached hard technical problems.
“I happened to work with some real visionary engineers,” he said. “If there was somebody I could work with, it’d be these people.”
The move also lined up with changes in his personal life. His family was growing, and he wanted to be closer to home. SAIC brought him in as a strategic hire on the research and development side, the part of the work he’d always gravitated toward.
Where AI Helps and Where it Runs into Walls
Not long after joining, Henson became part of the group that started building SAIC’s internal AI capabilities, before enterprise AI became a buzzword. The goal wasn’t experimentation for its own sake but to give employees real tools, with guardrails.
With backing from other leaders and executives, he helped start SAIC’s AI team, which later fed into the AI Council and the company’s early generative AI rollout. That work led to secure generative AI access across the company at a time when many organizations were blocking the tools outright.
He knew the risks. He also knew the cost of waiting.
“Leaning into that and pulling that in was something I’m really proud of,” he said.
When Henson talks about where AI is cost efficient, he points to the slowest parts of government work: acquisition, compliance and onboarding. He also sees near-term gains in cyber operations and IT service management, where automation can ease pressure on understaffed teams. The bigger constraint is infrastructure. In some environments, even adding compute isn’t trivial.
“We have customers we can’t turn on all the servers or we’ll blow a circuit,” Henson said. “It’s not just, can we do it? It’s should we be doing it when things aren’t ready?”
That reality pulls attention back to foundational work.
“It’s not as cool as the AI,” he said. “But arguably more impactful.”
Designing with Customers, Building with Partners
Henson spends time with customers before anyone starts pitching solutions. Those early sessions get to the real problem, not just the one people think they have. SAIC brings technologists, business leaders and visual methods into the room so teams can see how their systems fit together and where they break.
Partnerships sit at the center of that work. As an integrator, SAIC depends on a broad ecosystem of commercial tech companies, including firms new to the government space. Speed is the constant pressure point.
Henson thinks in systems. He looks at how tools, processes and people connect and he challenges setups that exist mainly because no one has revisited them.
“I’m a systems thinker first and foremost,” he said. “I see how things interdepend on each other.”
That mindset shapes how he approaches risk. He would rather try things in the open and learn fast than wait for perfect conditions that never arrive.
“What if we tried it and if it didn’t work, that’s OK, we’ll iterate and go fast,” he said.
Hands-on, Even Off the Clock
That instinct to build doesn’t switch off when the workday ends.
At home, Henson’s still taking things apart, putting them back together and testing new things, driven more by curiosity than any formal goal. If he weren’t in GovCon, he already knows where he’d put that impulse to build and fix things. He looks at industries people assume will stay low-tech the longest.
“I think I’d start a plumbing business,” Henson said. “It’s an area that’s ripe for disruption.”
He isn’t thinking about another app or dashboard. He’s thinking about machines taking on physical work in industries that most people still assume will stay solely human for decades. In his version of the future, automation leaves the server room and shows up in basements, crawl spaces and utility closets, changing how everyday services get delivered.
“The robots that make coffee in the airport, I’m thinking the same idea for plumbing and HVAC,” Henson said. “I think I would bring machines to a market like that.”
That same forward-looking posture shapes how he looks at what’s happening in government technology right now. Even with all the churn across the GovCon landscape, Henson sees the moment less as chaos and more as overdue change.
“Even with all the heightened focus of our industry right now, I’m excited for where it’s headed,” he said. “I think it’s going through a revolution, not an evolution, and I think that change has been needed.”