North Sioux City – Sterling’s headquarters in North Sioux City is just 1,700 miles east of the digital brain trust in Silicon Valley. And it’s roughly 1,200 miles from most of their customers in Washington, DC.
But the husband-and-wife team that oversees the tech company said they’re happy to have Sterling where he is.
“It has its challenges, but the benefits of being here outweigh the challenges,” said Sterling CEO Brad Moore, who spoke glowingly of Sioux City’s “blue-collar, Midwest work ethic.”
“The cost of living is another positive for us,” said Tim McCabe, president of Sterling.
Ten years ago, Brad Moore and his wife, Jean, who serves as Sterling’s executive and majority owner, purchased the company, then located in Norfolk, Nebraska.
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Sterling was founded in 1996 in Torrance, California by Brad Moore’s cousin Troy Jones and his wife Maggie.
Early on, the tech company forged relationships with what would become its largest group of customers – government entities.
“I think somebody wrote Troy a bad check the first year he was in business – it’s a business – and he said, ‘No more. “I know the federal government is going to pay me, so I’m going to focus on them,” Brad Moore said.
Government entities, from three-letter federal agencies to local governments and schools, represent the majority of Sterling’s business — the federal government alone accounts for about 75 percent. The company has worked with some of the most high-profile federal contractors, including Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman.
“We sell technology to the federal government,” Brad Moore said. And it is often a big seller. Buy from. 10 different manufacturers. They try and get all these systems working together and often turn to partners because we have experience with different manufacturers.
Working with the government and schools was very profitable; Sterling works on some of the largest federal contracts and several classified projects. Under Morris’ leadership, Sterling has acquired and maintained the highest level of certifications, clearances and training standards to maintain its workforce to meet the stringent requirements of federal technology contractors.
Sterling, then still a small company, moved from California to Norfolk, Nebraska, in 2002. Brad Moore, a native of Wayne, Nebraska, came on board two years later.
In the year When they bought the company in 2012, Brad and Jeanne Moore decided to bring in engineers to develop a profitable knowledge base. The company’s problem-solving skills are sought after by large and well-known technology companies to help solve technical problems.
Today, Sterling employs more than 60 engineers from coast to coast.
“In 2012, I think we made a commitment to go out and hire the best engineers we could find. And we hired them from Oracle, Lockheed (Martin), Northrup (Grumman),” said Brad Moore.
At the Sterling headquarters, a state-of-the-art “lab” — a noisy space in the building because of all the air-conditioning fans — allows employees to work on IT solutions and demonstrate them to customers.
“We have about 1,500 different partners that we sell and support their technology. And we take the best of what our customers need, and we put it in our labs, and we create solutions there. So if they’re having a situation where they need help, then we recreate it in our labs, we create real-world solutions; So we can do a proof of concept so you can see it in action,” said Brad Moore.
In total, Sterling currently employs 278 people, of which 150 work in North Sioux City. In an industry known for its interest in mergers and acquisitions, Moores Sterling is proud to be a local company with deep ties to the community.
A good portion of the company’s work today involves complex problem-solving and major projects — from helping the Department of Defense with layered missile defense systems to working with the Department of Energy on cybersecurity, to artificially intelligent “digital humans” who “work” at high Education. Sterling is a leading provider of computer hardware and custom imaging services to the most populous county in the United States – Los Angeles County.
Sterling’s leadership prides itself on the company’s high ethical standards, predictability, integrity, safety and transparency — qualities “very rare in our marketplace” and a strong set of Midwesterners.
In the year After purchasing Sterling in 2013, Brad and Jeanne Moore moved to Dakota Dunes. Five years after that, they paid nearly $4.68 million for the former Pacific Building in the old Gateway complex, which is about to be redeveloped.
The building, more or less abandoned for ten years, is in need of restoration. Some of Sterling’s employees worked in the building long before Sterling bought it, and found the rundown offices almost unchanged from the old days.
“We came and visited[the building]in 2018, some of the people who work for us today, their offices — they were in a time warp. Their whiteboards were still there, their handwritten text. Their pictures were still on the walls,” Jean Moore said.
Sterling moved into its 83,000-square-foot headquarters in 2019, after a transformation into a high-tech, Silicon Valley-esque office space, with polished concrete floors and a steel structure that remained only from the original building.
In addition to being headquartered on former Gateway property, many of Sterling’s employees are Gateway veterans. McCabe, Sterling’s president, was one of them – he joined Gateway in 1991 as an inside sales representative and has been with the company for 18 years.
“We’re very fortunate, because there are people who are connected in this community and have been in this community and have been here, 10, 15, 20 years later,” said Jean Moore of Sterling, listing former Gateway employees. .
Sterling has prospered in the years since moving to Union County — its headcount and revenue are five times what they were in 2013. During his years at Dakota Dunes and North Sioux City, Sterling is often ranked among the fastest-growing organizations in the country and has received numerous industry awards.
The headquarters range from a room designated for golf tees to a bustling, sunlit, spacious break room, complete with a variety of breakfast foods, along with staff amenities. Non-golfers can enjoy the shuffleboard table, ping-pong, checkers or foosball table. There are also wellness rooms and staff showers (“We have people who maybe go for a bike ride to lunch and then come back and want to shower,” Jean Moore said.)
Lurking somewhere about the place during office hours, Daisy, a light-hearted, 10-year-old office dog, roams the halls, greeting employees and reinforcing her presence, giving Sterling a sense of what’s not the stressful and stressful office. The past, but more alive, brighter and, perhaps, interesting.
Meeting rooms at the Sterling headquarters are named after South Dakota — Sturgis, Deadwood, Rushmore, Yankton and more — and South Dakota-themed artwork and photography are prominently displayed.
These design choices were made for a reason.
“All the time, our partners say, ‘Why in the world are you in South Dakota? You should be in Washington, D.C., where all the action is!’ Jean Moore said. “And, we’re ‘proud to be from South Dakota.’ So we want the building to look like that.
