Qintel Puts Pittsburgh on the Map for Cyber Intelligence

PITTSBURGH -- 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 (located on top of their building between PNC Park and Acrisure Stadium) 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.

Every quarter, the entire company flies into town to gather, brainstorm new concepts, and catch a Pirates game together. They are proud, self-proclaimed "Yinzers" who view their work not just as a business but as a critical mission to empower the nation's frontline cyber warriors. Qintel proves that you don't need a Silicon Valley address to defend the digital frontier -- sometimes all it takes is Pittsburgh grit and a refusal to compromise.

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.

To achieve this, Qintel built a powerhouse of diverse talent. On one side sits the data technology team -- engineers and software developers lured away from Fortune 10 giants who handle data collection, massive processing, machine learning integration and advanced AI analytics. On the other side sits the operational leadership, with veterans pulled directly from federal law enforcement, the intelligence community and the Department of War.

The merger of these two worlds solved a fundamental problem plaguing Washington. Historically, the U.S. government has struggled to scale innovation quickly. Bureaucratic acquisition pipelines mean that by the time an agency successfully procures a software application -- a process that can easily take three to five years -- the product is already dangerously obsolete.

"The bad guys move at the speed of the internet," Mularski said. "Government procurement moves at the speed of paperwork."

Matthews said that they solved this by upending the delivery model.

Instead of selling a rigid "widget," the firm delivers an evolving subscription to live, continuously updating global threat intelligence. No matter how long a federal partner's internal administrative timeline takes, it is guaranteed to receive the most current, hyper-innovative layer of defense. This development bridges the operational gaps that the founders witnessed firsthand during their undercover days.

Matthews says that their new partnership with the USCC underscores Qintel's numerous patented capabilities in full-spectrum intelligence collection, data integration and analysts honed through decades of elite military and government experience.

Mularksi, who was the supervisory special agent for the FBI Pittsburgh's cyber squad, said he always likes to remind people that Pittsburgh is the center of the cyber universe.

"We did some very big cyber cases here, like the first indictment of Chinese nation-state actors," he said of a case from several years ago.

"Having us, this cyber threat intelligence company that's empowering our nation's cyber warriors, in Pittsburgh is a point of pride for us," Mularski added. "We're really proud that this is coming from Pittsburgh."

Salena Zito is a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between. To find out more about Salena and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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