ByteCubed is growing fast and has a new Crystal City HQ to prove it

According to founder Ahmad Ishaq, it has been a spectacular year of growth for government tech consulting firm ByteCubed. Though the company was founded back in 2011, it spent its first couple years boasting only two real employees (Ishaq and his wife) and an “office” in their condo.
But oh how things have changed. This past Friday ByteCubed officially cut the ribbon on its new 17,000-square-foot headquarters at 2231 Crystal Dr., a new home to the company’s 150 employees.
See, ByteCubed is a government consulting firm that wants to change the way the government does tech. It “specializes in reimagining and replacing government systems,” according to a statement on the new office. For the first couple years of the company’s existence it did this by partnering with larger contracting firms to get jobs. But about 36 months ago, Ishaq said, he realized that the way forward for ByteCubed was to go do it on their own.
So that’s what he did, and, “luckily it ended up working out.”
Ishaq told Technical.ly that once ByteCubed had grown to the point that it was looking for a real headquarters, Crystal City was a “no-brainer.”
“We looked at where other companies we would partner with are located,” he said. And, well, Crystal City with its focus on government entities and cyber and defense was a perfect fit.
The actual space of the office is also a point of pride for ByteCubed. CEO Alexander Martinez told Technical.ly that the space is designed to be open and modern and transparent — a far cry, he says, from the traditional consulting or government office.
“We’re trying to create a movement in the government contracting space to reimagine how people solve government problems,” Martinez said. Creating a space that is innovative in itself is a key part of this.
The company also hopes to hold events in the office’s large social area — both their own and community events like hackathons or meetups.