Leidos planning to add 3,000 employees to NGEN project

Leidos is planning on adding 3,000 employees to work on the Navy's Next Generation Enterprise Network program, after winning a contentious $7.7 billion contract for the program.

Leidos CEO Roger Krone said at a J.P. Morgan virtual conference Tuesday that the company is also hoping some employees from incumbent Perspecta will join Leidos to continue to work on the NGEN program.

"Our hope is, as we ramp up over the summer, between Leidos and our teammates, we'll be adding more than 3,000 people to the NGEN program," Krone said. "A lot of those people will come from our teammates, but we are hopeful that some of the Perspecta employees who are currently on the Navy IT program will want to come to Leidos and keep supporting the Navy customer."

Leidos started work on the transition in January after a lengthy protest by Perspecta that included a Government Accountability Office filing and a federal lawsuit, both of which were denied.

NGEN provides information technology services to more than 400,000 hardware devices and more than 650,000 users at 1,700 locations around the world, according to the Navy.