Space propulsion company Agile Space Industries is expanding its footprint to the Pacific Northwest, signing a sublease for a new engineering office in Bellevue, Wash.
Situated in the Sunset North office complex along Interstate 90, the nearly 5,740-square-foot space will initially house a half-dozen existing employees while scaling up to accommodate an engineering team of 20 to 30 people.
The effort is being led by Chief Technology Officer Jake Mills, a former propulsion engineer and crew member at Jeff Bezos’ Kent-based Blue Origin space venture. Mills joined Durango, Colo.-based Agile in June and the Bellevue hub will try to tap into more of the Seattle region’s deep aerospace talent pool for systems, design, and propulsion engineering.
Started in 2009 as Advanced Mobile Propulsion Technologies, Agile specializes in in-space chemical propulsion systems for satellites, lunar landers, and national security missions. Unlike booster rockets that launch payloads off the planet, the company’s hardware — including thrusters, propellant tanks, and integrated propulsion systems — takes over once spacecraft reach orbit, navigating everything from commercial constellations to lunar exploration.
“The talent pool there, manufacturing capabilities there, customer base there, supply chain based in Seattle, all make it very attractive to go there, and that is the reason we’re opening up the engineering office,” Mills told GeekWire.
Agile joins a bustling Pacific Northwest aerospace cluster anchored by heavyweights like Blue Origin, SpaceX’s Starlink engineering operations in Redmond, and a growing wave of startups and orbital logistics companies like Starfish Space.
Overall, Agile employs 178 people across the business. The majority of its workforce is based at its Durango headquarters, alongside an additive manufacturing center in Pennsylvania and a 25,000-square-foot test center breaking ground in Tulsa, Okla.
The Bellevue office is located at 3120-3180 139th Ave SE.
Backed by a $17 million Series A funding round earlier this year, Agile has scaled rapidly, and revenue over the last three years has more than tripled. Investors include Caruso Ventures, Howdy Partners, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Veteran Ventures, Denver Ventures, and Cortado Ventures, among others.
Even as Agile plants a flag in the region, the expansion comes amid growing caution over Washington state’s business climate. Mills noted that the company shares the same concerns recently voiced by Stoke Space CEO Andy Lapsa — who warned during Seattle Space Week in September that if starting over today, “I’m not sure we’d make the same decision” to build in Washington, given local tax and political pressures.
While Agile is eager to tap into the local engineering talent for its Bellevue office, Mills cautioned that future investments, such as a prospective manufacturing and system integration facility, could face headwinds if Washington doesn’t match the aggressive incentives and welcoming posture shown by competing states like Oklahoma.
“I’m just biased towards the opportunity that when you get all the right people in the right place and you have that competition, you have all the capabilities that you need in one place, great things happen,” Mills said. “As people disperse from that, you start to lose that opportunity.”