January ends with a thud in Seattle. Amazon confirms another 16,000 roles cut, stacking onto roughly 30,000 since October, the largest workforce contraction in the company’s history. Inside AWS, especially the federal and national security ranks, the mood is quieter than the headlines. These are engineers who built systems where failure is not an option, people trained to think in blast radius, latency, and consequence. When the lights flicker in Big Tech, this talent does not vanish. It looks for signal. That shift is already visible in serious startup news.
Vibrint saw it immediately. The Hanover, Maryland–based national security technology firm moved counter to the cycle and did it in public. On January 30, 2026, Chief Executive Officer Tom Lash posted a simple message that cut through the noise. More than 100 direct, funded roles. TS/SCI technical professionals. A few support positions. Direct outreach. No varnish. No corporate throat clearing. Just capacity meeting urgency. This is the kind of startup news that shows intent, not optics.
The moment lands heavier because Tom Lash knows the room. From 2017 to 2023, he built and led the AWS Federal Delivery Organization, running contract execution across the U.S. federal portfolio with more than 125 cleared professionals. Before that, decades at SAIC and Leidos. This is not a recruiter sniffing opportunity. This is an operator recognizing familiar hands in a disrupted market and opening the door before the window closes. That distinction matters in credible startup news.
Vibrint itself is a study in tuned frequency. Formed in November 2023 from the merger of Engineering Solutions, founded in 1998, and Meadowgate Technologies, founded in 2006, the company sits where hybrid cloud, high-performance computing, SIGINT, and mission resilience intersect. The name fits. Vibrint vibrates between legacy intelligence systems and modern cloud architectures, translating one language into the other without losing meaning. The May 2025 acquisition of Ampsight added explainable AI and geospatial intelligence depth, while the December 2025 opening of a 15,000-square-foot Reston office signaled real momentum.
Hiring more than 100 cleared professionals is not opportunistic bravado. It implies funded programs, immediate billability, and customers already waiting. In a market where TS/SCI talent takes years to grow and minutes to lose, this is labor arbitrage at its cleanest. AWS releases pressure. Vibrint absorbs it and converts it into mission velocity. In today’s startup news, this is what disciplined counter-cyclical execution actually looks like.
There is a bigger undercurrent here. Big Tech optimizes for culture resets and margin discipline. National security optimizes for continuity. When those cycles drift out of phase, companies like Vibrint act as transformers, stepping talent down from hyperscale to high-consequence work without burning off expertise.
