A little more than a week after completing its purchase of Virginia-based defense contractor PAE, Amentum will make the acquired company’s former chief executive, John Heller, its new CEO and retrain current chief John Vollmer as chairman of the board.
Amentum, the Germantown, Md.-based Department of Energy contractor, announced plans to make Heller CEO effective March 28, according to a press release. Heller was CEO of PAE for seven years, until March 2021 when he stepped down for personal reasons, Virginia Business Magazine reported at the time. The magazine cited a Securities and Exchange Commission filing saying Heller’s resignation was not due to any disagreement with PAE.
Before PAE, Heller was president of the professional support services division of L-3 Communications, now part of L3 Harris Technologies, and later was senior vice president and chief operating officer of Engility Corporation, now part of SAIC, which provides information technology to government and corporate clients.
“It is an honor to be asked to lead Amentum into the future,” Heller said in the Amentum release. “I look forward to building on the many accomplishments under John’s leadership and I am extremely excited about the opportunity to work together with Amentum’s over 50,000 employees to deliver value to our customers in one of the largest and fastest growing service companies in our industry.”
During Heller’s tenure at PAE, the government and defense contractor’s revenue rose to $2.76 billion from $1.6 billion, according to Heller’s LinkedIn biography.
Vollmer is the first CEO for the privately-held Amentum, born as a standalone company two years ago when Los Angeles-based AECOM sold its Management Services division to a pair of New York-based investment firms Lindsay Goldberg and American Securities LLC.
Prior to Amentum, Vollmer was president of the AECOM Management Services Group, and executive vice president of operations for URS Federal Services, two of the current company’s predecessors in the federal contracting business that served DOE the Department of Defense and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
“I am incredibly proud to have led Amentum during its first two critical years, and it has been a privilege to lead such a talented and dedicated workforce who care deeply about our customers and their success,” Vollmer said.
Vollmer is 64-years old, according to Amentum. Heller, who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., in 1984, appears to be four or five years younger, based on an Internet search. Vollmer earned his bachelor’s degree from Flagler College in Florida during 1979.
