Umbra, the radar satellite company that promised Reston more than 100 jobs in February, has picked its building. A county building permit filed Oct. 29 for a project called “Umbra – Reston” covers a tenant suite at 12110 Sunset Hills Road, a six-story office building in the RTC West office park about a nine-minute walk from the Reston Town Center Metro station.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s February announcement did not name a building, and Bisnow reported at the time that the address had not been disclosed. The permit is the first public record we have found that places the office.
The state announced the project on Feb. 12 as a $6.75 million investment, a 20,000-square-foot office in Reston and more than 100 new jobs, backed by a $500,000 grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund. Umbra keeps its headquarters at 1700 North Moore Street in Arlington and in Santa Barbara, California, FFXnow reported.
Umbra builds radar satellites that image the ground through clouds and darkness
Umbra started in Santa Barbara in 2015 and builds satellites that carry synthetic aperture radar, or SAR. A SAR satellite sends its own radar pulses toward Earth and records the echoes, so it can produce images at night and through cloud cover, which an ordinary camera in orbit cannot do. The governor’s office put the resolution of Umbra’s constellation at 25 centimeters, and the company sells its imagery and builds custom satellite systems for commercial and military customers.
Chief executive David Langan said in the February announcement that Umbra “leads in modern mesh antenna technology and persistent remote sensing capabilities,” work he tied to national security and commercial missions.
The office is going into RTC West 2, a six-story building from 1988
Fairfax County’s assessment records list 12110 Sunset Hills Road as RTC West 2, a six-story office building completed in 1988 with about 141,000 square feet of space. It is one of three office buildings in RTC West, the park on Sunset Hills Road near Town Center Parkway that was formerly known as Reston Executive Center. The county lists the owner as 12100 Sunset Hills LLC, which shares a Bethesda mailing address with JBG Smith, the company behind RTC West.
The building sits between Sunset Hills Road and the W&OD Trail. Google Maps puts the walk to the Reston Town Center Metro station at 0.4 mile, about nine minutes along Sunset Hills Road. Its walking route to Fountain Square, 0.7 mile, follows the trail for part of the way.
The permit covers the first phase of an interior build-out
The filing describes a Phase 1 alteration of an existing tenant suite. Crews would tear out the current partitions, build new walls, doors and millwork, rework the lighting, power and ductwork, and install powered workstation furniture.
The permit does not say how many phases follow, which floor the suite occupies or how many square feet it covers, and the county has not yet approved it. Umbra has not said when employees will move in.
Umbra’s Reston job postings pay $130,000 to $235,000
Umbra is already advertising jobs in Reston. Of the 25 openings on the company’s job board on Oct. 30, 16 list Reston as a location, most of them alongside Arlington or Santa Barbara. Posted salary ranges on those 16 run from $130,000, the floor for a program security manager, to $235,000, the ceiling for a ground software systems architect.
Most of the roles are engineering jobs: radar systems, cryptographic systems, data platforms, mission systems and flight software written in Rust, a programming language designed to prevent the memory errors that crash software or open security holes. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put Fairfax County’s average weekly wage at $2,451 in the first quarter of 2026, or about $127,000 a year. Every Reston-listed Umbra range starts above that figure.
Space and defense employers keep choosing Reston and Herndon
Umbra’s filing came two days after Auria, a Colorado Springs company that builds software for space and missile operations, announced an East Coast headquarters with 78 jobs at Summit I, 2000 Edmund Halley Drive, on the south side of the same Metro station. Blue Origin’s Reston engineering office sits across the street from Summit I, and Scout Space’s headquarters is next door. At Reston Town Center, Anduril pulled build-out permits at One Freedom Square this summer, and SpiderOak runs its headquarters from 11911 Freedom Drive.
- GRVTY Filed to Put Its Name on a Herndon Office Building as Space Companies Keep Arriving in Reston and Herndon
- Auria Is Bringing 78 Space Jobs to Summit I on Edmund Halley Drive in Reston
- Anduril Is Taking Floors at Reston Town Center
- Danish Counter-Drone Maker MyDefence Opens Its North American Headquarters in Reston
- Booz Allen’s Global Headquarters Is Going Up at Reston Station
- Our video on Reston and Herndon’s space boom
Reston Town Center’s condominium buildings sit within a mile of the office
The condominium buildings at Reston Town Center, among them Midtown, the Savoy, Market Street and Stratford, sit within a mile’s walk of 12110 Sunset Hills Road. Stratford, on the far side of the Town Center, is 0.8 mile away on foot. Reston Station, one Silver Line stop east at Wiehle-Reston East, adds the JW Marriott Residences condominiums at Reston Row and a train ride of a few minutes to the Reston Town Center station. Our guide to living in Reston covers the neighborhoods, the schools and Reston Association.
The hiring comes as more Fairfax County residents look for work. Fairfax County’s unemployment rate stood at 3.4 percent in September, close to the 3.3 percent of a year earlier and above the 2.6 percent of September 2024, according to preliminary state figures FFXnow reported Oct. 29.
If you are relocating for a job at Umbra or another employer near the Reston Town Center station, we sell homes across Reston and Herndon and can walk you through the buildings and neighborhoods within an easy commute of Sunset Hills Road.
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