Innovation Runs Deep for Booz Allen’s Seattle Teams

The Queen City, the Jet City, the Emerald City. Whatever nickname you prefer, Seattle is a gorgeous green jewel and a global gateway. With Puget Sound and Mount Rainer around the corner, Seattle’s unique landscape is also an outdoor explorer’s paradise. At Booz Allen’s Seattle office, adventurers and innovators are drawn to a spirit of forward-thinking, diverse assignments, and a tight-knit team that feels like family.

Our Seattle outpost houses experts in a variety of areas, including cybersecurity, network IT, software development, engineering, data science, and an array of training methods including virtual and augmented reality. Seattle-based clients include the Environmental Protection Agency, the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, the U.S. Army Forces Command at Joint Base Lewis McChord, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. 

Through partnership with the University of Washington’s CoMotion innovation hub, we engage the larger Seattle-based innovation economy, and our top tech talents maintain connections with local powerhouses like Microsoft, Amazon, and Tableau. With a unique mix of residents and a history of breakthroughs in trade, transportation, and commercial flight, Seattle has worldwide potential for technological problem solving.

Spectre is a virtual reality training platform focused on highly regulated, logistically unavailable unmanned aerial system (UAS) electronic countermeasures. The Spectre platform provides training on the operation and implementation of devices and drone responses, giving soldiers a non-kinetic way to avoid or counteract UAS devices. It’s scalable, portable, easy to use, and cost/time efficient.

Spectre is among the projects that Sam Hendricks works on as manager of Booz Allen’s Seattle Immersive Studio. Through Spectre, “Booz Allen brings a unique mix of subject matter expertise and a focus on keeping warfighters safe by training them how to respond to the emerging threat of hostile UAS devices,” Sam says.  

Eric R. Jones, an innovation lead for our undersea enterprise work, thrives on the collaborative spirit that Booz Allen’s Seattle community brings to his many projects.“We’re a team of innovators and solution seekers working together to make a positive impact on our world,” Eric says. “We thrive by finding creative ways to blend capabilities, domain knowledge, client needs, and business processes.”

Eric collaborated with colleagues Ian Byrnes and Rachel Dendiu to develop the vision for OceanLens™, a software tool that fuses topographic and bathymetric data to help sailors understand the undersea world in three dimensions.

Our Seattle team’s latest innovation effort, Project Baya, explores the possibilities of applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to undersea acoustic signal processing. Led by Robert Piazza and Jeff Keeton, Project Baya is designed to help clients discriminate shipping contacts in high density maritime environments. 

For three years, Booz Allen has partnered with the University of Washington’s Electrical Engineering Capstone project, leading to such technological innovations as the introduction of WiBotic’s wireless robot recharging capabilities to unmanned underwater vehicle applications.

In partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, our Seattle employees gather annually to participate in Rebuilding Together Seattle, a nonprofit effort to preserve affordable homeownership and revitalize communities, with a focus on the aging, veteran, and disabled populations.

Our Seattle employees also often participate in local hackathons, which have tackled such topics as bicycle safety, malaria awareness, and landmine removal. Booz Allen Seattle also partners with FareStart, a non-profit, social entrepreneurial organization that offers job placement and training for the homeless and otherwise disadvantaged. “Innovation is a core component of our office culture,” says contract manager Cassie Duong. “And we apply that same innovative spirit in the community as well,” she adds. 

As a tech industry nexus, Seattle is a natural fit for Booz Allen’s holistic approach to solving diverse problems. Our Seattle team includes professionals from broad backgrounds and areas of expertise, including with the National Maritime Center, the U.S. Army, and several Joint Combatant Commands, as well as an array of health and commercial projects. Holly Stowell, a Booz Allen deputy program manager working with the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard—our largest Pacific Northwest client—says, “I love that if we face a tough task or something new that we can always reach back into the firm for expertise.”