Salena Zito

Western Pennsylvania’s leadership in AI, robotics and cyber intelligence companies that work with the Department of War was reinforced recently. Qintel was selected for an $84 million contract with the United States Cyber Command to deliver a threat intelligence solution in support of full-spectrum cyber operations.

Qintel also just announced it will be part of the inaugural Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit in the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, which Sen. David McCormick (R-Pa.) is hosting in July. The two-day conference convenes CEOs, investors and senior military leaders to boost state defense investments, nuclear and natural gas energy, and AI, much as the Energy Innovation Summit did at Carnegie Mellon University last summer.

Qintel is a private data technology threat intelligence company that has quietly been headquartered in Pittsburgh for nearly 20 years. It was founded by city native William Schambura, a Woodland Hills graduate. Think of ESPN’s Pat McAfee – Schambura has the same swagger but without the microphone.

Walking into their offices on the north side of Pittsburgh, it’s clear that even if the scores of former military and intelligence professionals weren’t from here, they have all embraced the culture of the city and its working-class ethos, while adding a colorful James Bond homage.

In a world where threats move at warp speed and come from all directions, their job is to utilize their military and intelligence expertise, along with data collection, AI-driven analytics, tools and software development, to provide portions of the government and corporate America with a system that halts attacks.

Keith Mularski, a former FBI agent who is now Qintel’s global ambassador, and Damon Matthews, the senior director of national security operations, sat down with the Washington Examiner to explain what they do, why they do it, and why Pittsburgh.

Anyone in the region who has seen their neon Qintel sign has often wondered what exactly it is. And that curiosity only deepened when nearly 1 million people literally descended on its backyard during the NFL draft this spring.

The building is located where the long-gone Exposition Park once stood, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates and site of the inaugural World Series. Mularski said that he and Schambura first began working together at a small cyber facility in Pittsburgh that was called the National Cyber Forensic and Training Alliance.

“That started in the early 2000s as a place to bring law enforcement, academia and industry together to fight cyber crime,” Mularski explained.

They worked undercover for a number of years until Schaumbura started up Qintel with the goal of creating a government-grade intelligence company in the commercial sector.

For most of its existence, Qintel operated stealthily by design. The vast majority of its portfolio consists of non-forward-facing, highly classified defense and intelligence contracts.

However, the company recently crossed a significant milestone by establishing a major unclassified and forward-facing partnership with the USCC.

This contract represents a watershed moment for the firm and is a massive validation of Pittsburgh’s tech landscape. To honor the milestone, Qintel’s leadership has begun opening up to the community and collaborating with organizations like Pittsburgh’s Technology Council, as well as local leadership, to highlight Pennsylvania’s thriving tech corridor.

Today, Qintel employs fewer than 100 elite personnel. While their operations are distributed, with remote workers spread across regions like Florida, the firm’s cultural heartbeat remains fiercely tethered to western Pennsylvania.

From its inception, Qintel departed radically from the traditional Silicon Valley startup playbook. There was no venture capital money, no courting of big-name tech investors, and no constant pressure to satisfy quarterly board meetings. Over its 17-year history, the firm has remained entirely private, homegrown and self-funded.

That independence was a deliberate and tactical choice. By remaining self-reliant, the founders could protect their unique corporate culture, shield their elite methodologies, and focus entirely on making bad things happen to bad folks, ranging from highly organized cybercriminal rings to hostile nation-state entities and global terrorist groups.