Colorado Springs-based government contractor Bluestaq said Friday it will hire 585 people over the next eight years after state economic development officials approved $5.57 million in incentives for the company.

The nearly 4-year-old startup, which now employs 65 people in downtown Colorado Springs, will use the state tax credits to recruit the additional workers and more than triple its downtown office space to accommodate them, CEO Seth Harvey said Friday.

“We want to bring as many jobs as possible to Colorado, and this incentive helps us do that,” Harvey said. “We have had a lot of conversations with other communities that have been courting us because of the opportunities we have.

“This helps us attract and retain talent in Colorado and keep our headquarters in Colorado Springs. I want to thank the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, the Governor’s Office and the Colorado Springs Chamber (of Commerce & Economic Development Corp.) for making this happen.”

Gov. Jared Polis said “Bluestaq’s expansion builds on our success and creates hundreds of well-paying, high-quality jobs in El Paso County,” in a news release Friday. “We are adding good jobs across Colorado and succeeding in our efforts to be a nation-leading model for aerospace.”

Much of the expansion is fueled by a $280 million contract extension a year ago to continue building a database of objects in space. That contract needs more  staff. Under the three-year extension, Bluestaq will integrate much more data from more sources into the Space Force Unified Data Library.

The data helps 3,500 businesses, government and military agencies, the intelligence community and others in 25 countries keep track of space objects.

Bluestaq also is expanding into the commercial market, starting with the health care industry, and plans to widen its reach worldwide, starting with four countries later this year, Harvey said, though he declined to identify the nations.

Bluestaq landed a major investment in November from Colorado Springs real estate and technology investor Kevin O’Neil, which O’Neil called a partnership, to help the company expand more quickly. The company specializes in data-management systems, analytics and software; it builds “highly secure enterprise software solutions for storing, managing and sharing data,” according to the company’s website.

“This project is layered with wins for our community,” said Cecilia Harry, the chamber’s chief economic development officer, pointing to O’Neil’s investment and the tax credits. “This project prompted the launch of Find Your COS, our new suite of talent initiatives that will benefit our broader business community. This project is driving significant investment and innovation in our region.”

The chamber has started a new workforce development program called “Find Your COS” to help workers new to the city to find housing and provide social and professional engagement opportunities. It also helps chamber members find information on relocation, neighborhoods, child care, recreation and other needs. The pilot program is focused on the aerospace, defense, cybersecurity and technology sectors.

Bluestaq will get tax credits based on the number of jobs it creates during the next eight years for up to 585 full-time positions, paying an average of nearly $190,000 in an incentive package approved Thursday by the Colorado Economic Development Commission. The company also considered locations in Ogden, Utah, and College Park, Md., where O’Neil’s Catalyst Campus for Technology and Innovation operates satellite campuses, according to a document included with the commission’s agenda.

“In order to meet its contract ceiling, the company will need to both recruit high quality talent from out of state and retain top talent,” the document says. “The driving factors behind the location decision are access to talent, cost of living, and the proximity to tech and innovation, and ability to leverage their presence in Ogden and College Park.”

Harvey said Bluestaq will use the credits to lease and move into up to 50,000 square feet of additional office space in downtown Colorado Springs that it needs by June, to recruit and train employees and to provide scholarships at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and other colleges to expand its intern program.

The company plans to offer five UCCS graduate and undergraduate scholarships valued at $65,000 each for its interns in the fall.

“We believe in our internship program as a way to bring in top-level talent to grow professionals from the ground up,” Harvey said. “When we talked to our interns, two common threads emerged — they couldn’t find housing, especially for just three months, so they ended up using Craigslist to rent a room in someone’s house. That is not a good look for Colorado Springs. The other issue that emerged is they (interns) found it hard to find their tribe and meet people.”

Harvey said he wants the additional office space to be a key recruiting tool for the company, bringing “the amenities they have at home to the office, including a fitness center, golf simulators and kitchens. Talent attraction and retention is about more than just salaries and benefits. It is also about the office you work in, the camaraderie of the team and the challenging problems you work on.”

Harvey and three cofounders — Andy Hofle, Simon Nunn and David Rodvold — worked together at Intelligent Software Solutions before it acquired by a private equity firm, merged with two other companies and sold to Parsons. They started Bluestaq in April 2018 at Catalyst Campus and the company won its first contract two months later to start building the data library.

Bluestaq won a $37 million extension of that contract in 2019 to expand the library to include air and maritime data, and in the same year moved out of Catalyst Campus and into the FirstBank building.