How Verge Talent Partners is Building a Stronger Cyber Workforce in Loudoun County
While Loudoun County is recognized as a top tech hub, it’s also a community with a strong sense of purpose. This is something that Jen Tress, co-founder of Verge Talent Partners, knows well. Jen and her co-founder, Abdul Smith, founded the company in 2020 in California and in 2025, expanded to Loudoun County, basing operations out of Venture X, a co-working space in Ashburn.
Prior to starting Verge, Jen held leadership positions in the public and private sectors, helping governments, nonprofits, startups, and Fortune 500 companies stabilize, scale and mature. Jen and the Verge team partner with clients who primarily agree on a key premise: if you create excellent candidate and employee experiences, you’ll deliver excellent customer and user experiences and gain a competitive edge.
When Verge came to Loudoun, Jen took some time to understand the business community and began to notice a gap in the cybersecurity talent market.
“Loudoun is a global hub for data centers, and cybersecurity and data centers are closely linked in specific ways,” Jen says. “Nearly 20% of cyber security roles remain unfilled in the country. Anything less than 100% is a risk and presents a talent gap. We saw an unmet need and wanted to be the helpers.”
That’s the core of what Verge Talent Partners does. With a collaborative approach, they help ambitious organizations design and implement their people operations strategies, placing a focus on the unique challenges of the tech and cybersecurity industries.
For Jen, a successful cybersecurity workforce isn’t just about technical skills. While essentials like cloud security, threat detection, and identity management are crucial, she emphasizes that other skills are just as important. She points to the importance of emotional resilience, collaboration, and a constant learning mindset. In a field where threats are always changing, you have to be ready to adapt.
“You need to be able to tell a story and influence people,” she explains. “Jargon is out. You have to translate security risks and mitigation into a language everyone can understand. Security isn’t just an IT problem; it doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s a cross-functional issue that requires everyone to be on the same page.”
Jen added that the shift to remote and hybrid work has completely changed how companies recruit and retain cybersecurity professionals. It has opened up the talent pool, allowing companies to find candidates across the country, not just in their immediate area. But this also means there’s more competition for top talent.
“Employees can avoid a higher cost of living and get a better work-life balance,” Jen notes. “For many, especially those used to being in Security Operations Centers who are on-call 24/7, the flexibility is a game-changer.”
Jen warns that many companies make key mistakes in their hiring and retention strategies. A big one? Treating security hiring like regular IT hiring. Companies sometimes use the same job descriptions, interview processes, and evaluation criteria they’d use for developers or system administrators. Cybersecurity professionals are naturally skeptical and think in terms of risk, so the hiring process needs to reflect that. She also sees a common problem with “unicorn hiring”—trying to find one person who can do the job of an entire security team. This just scares candidates away who think “I can’t do all of that.”
Beyond hiring, she says retention is often overlooked. Research indicates that companies often lose talent not because of money, but because of burnout and a lack of clear career paths. When companies don’t assess and address intangible skills like stress management and communication, employees struggle (no matter their tenure at the organization) and are faced with career confusion.
She further explained how this new landscape comes with its own challenges since onsite, remote, and hybrid managed security teams require nuanced management and oversight approaches. For example, remote environments provide much desired flexibility, while also increasing complexity in maintaining a strong culture and mentoring junior staff.
“Employers underestimate the onboarding complexity of cybersecurity hiring,” Jen explained. “In order to get a pulse of the organization, security roles require access to systems and background checks. Companies that don’t plan extended onboarding periods get people that feel they will fail.”
So why Loudoun? For Jen Tress, it’s about community. She and her husband moved close to the area to be part of a place with a diverse community and a strong professional network. Loudoun is home to an incredible workforce and a growing number of businesses, and Jen is dedicated to giving back to the community that has welcomed her.
“We saw an unmet need that was focused on the people strategy side of running a high performing organization,” she says. “Mr. Rogers said to ‘look for the helpers.’ I want to make an impact on the public good. If there is an opportunity to help, I will jump in.”
This focus, linking employee experiences to customer experiences, is what drives Verge Talent Partners. By focusing on people, not just profit or outputs, they’re helping to build a more resilient and prepared tech and cybersecurity landscape, one person and one organization at a time.
You can learn more about Verge Talent Partners by visiting their website at https://www.vergetalentpartners.com.