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Umbra is preparing to hire more people in Goleta as the company opened its new 50,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in June.

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Umbra opens new manufacturing facility in Goleta

By Jorge Mercado

Co-Managing Editor

Santa Barbara-based Umbra is furthering its investment in the region with the opening of its new 50,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Goleta. The move quadruples Umbra’s previous production capacity.

Umbra is a space technology company that came out of stealth mode in 2021. The company provides access to satellite images and offers dedicated satellite missions.

Announced June 25, the new space will boost Umbra’s annual satellite production capabilities, supporting the company’s goal of creating new satellites with over four times the imaging throughput and enabling the manufacture of world-class apertures more than four times larger than previously possible.

This expansion also puts Umbra in a position to deliver tailored radar solutions at speed and scale, from precision data products to full system deployments.

Umbra provides high-resolution synthetic aperture radar data, systems, and custom RF mission solutions. Synthetic aperture radar, or SAR, is a remote sensing technique that uses radar to create high-resolution images.

Umbra’s SAR technology allows the company to capture images with a 25-centimeter resolution, even through cloud cover and at night.

“This new facility is a transformative step for Umbra,” said David Langan, Umbra’s co-founder and CEO.

“Not only does it represent a significant investment in our U.S. manufacturing capabilities, but it also reflects our confidence in the technology, the team and the growing demand for timely, trusted and operational SAR capabilities.”

Alongside the physical expansion, Umbra is growing its workforce across engineering, manufacturing, operations anddata science.

“Umbra is proud to invest in the domestic SAR industrial base when it matters most,” Langan said.

“We’re scaling with purpose — and with performance — and this facility will only further empower our customers with faster intel and the ability to make smarter decisions on the ground.”

The company is also doubling its office space in Arlington, Virginia to support research and development and deepen engagement with government programs.

“Our constellation is fully designed and built in-house—engineered from the ground up to outperform. It’s field-proven and trusted by national security users,” said Todd Master, Chief Operating Officer at Umbra.

“We’re not just building satellites—we’re delivering the full suite of domestic SAR infrastructure to enable a new model of communications and intelligence on a global scale.”

It has been a big year for Umbra.

In March, the company signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

Under the terms of this agreement, Umbra gained access to NGA’s research insights to better align its capabilities with mission requirements, while NGA can leverage Umbra’s advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar and RF data products and satellite technology to expand its research and operational capabilities.

In April, Umbra was selected for a Strategic Funding Increase opportunity by SpaceWERX, the innovation arm of the Department of the Air Force.

Announced April 8, the strategic funding increase, or STRATFI, is designed to accelerate the transition of mature technologies into operational use for the Department of Defense and commercial partners.

The company said that through this program, Umbra will design, build, and launch a next-generation constellation of spacecraft to demonstrate the advantages of comprehensive, wide-area SAR coverage for search and find missions in open ocean and maritime applications.

“We’re proud to have the opportunity to take this additional step to provide our mission-critical capabilities directly to the warfighter at a time when speed of acquisition is paramount,” Director of Mission Solutions at Umbra Dr. Bonnie Kean said in a press release.

Finally, in June, Langan and Gabe Dominocielo, both co-founders of Umbra, were honored as the Entrepreneurs of the Year at the 2025 South Coast Business and Technology Awards.

“Having grown up here, this iås a very sentimental feeling for both David and me, to be honored by our hometown, it is very special,” Dominocielo told the Business Times.

Though Umbra started in 2015, the company came out of stealth mode in 2021 and has seen immense growth since then.

Dominocielo said the company has now launched 10 satellites — the majority of which have been launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Lompoc — and upped its employee headcount to 172, according to LinkedIn.

“The Central Coast is a very special place with leading aerospace companies and technology infrastructure that attract incredibly talented people,” Dominocielo said.

“This area has the right people and there is something special about this community.”

• email: jmercado@pacbiztimes.com

Cal Poly’s new economic development director is up to the task

By Jorge Mercado

Co-Managing Editor

San Luis Obispo County has always been known for its great beauty and even better wine, but for the past decade-plus, Cal Poly has been embracing innovation and entrepreneurship.

We here on the Central Coast have had a front-row seat to view the university’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development Center grow into a force to be reckoned with.

From Cal Poly’s incubator program to its startup competition AngelCon, the CIE’s impact is becoming more and more noticeable.

And despite a major change coming in the past few months, Donica Forensich, the new Economic Development Director of the Cal Poly CIE Small Business Development Center, is up to the task of continuing that momentum.

Forensich has small business in her blood. Both her father and grandfather were small business owners in the construction industry and as a corporate lawyer, she has been helping small businesses for years.

As such, Forensich knew that when her time was up as a lawyer, she would still want to work with small businesses in a different capacity.

“I am so excited to be in this role,” she said.

Forensich has some big shoes to fill, taking over for Judy Mahan who left last year. Mahan was a true collaborator, building up the CIE program and working with entities throughout the tri-counties, including us and our annual Central Coast Innovation Awards, to showcase the immense talent coming out of SLO and Forensich is ready to carry that torch.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Forensich on July 1, and the one thing I gleaned from our conversation was her genuine excitement.

She is no stranger to Cal Poly or its innovation programs. Forensich has been working with the university since the very start of the first AngelCon.

Her background as a corporate lawyer was something Mahan sought when Cal Poly was first putting together these incubator programs. A mutual mentor between the two connected them and the rest is history.

From there, Forensich spent the better part of a decade helping small businesses here in San Luis Obispo, and she was also a part of AngelCon’s funding.

“For the last 10 years, I was pretty active as a volunteer for both the SBDC and CIE,” she said.

The majority of that time she wasn’t even in the area, funnily enough. A native of San Jose, Forensich was living up north when she was first connected with Mahan.

But she always knew she wanted to call the Central Coast home, even before her involvement with the university. That all came to fruition in September of 2021 when Forensich moved to Paso Robles where she still lives today.

“This is just such a beautiful area. I discovered this area a long time before I even started volunteering and I had been coming down to Paso and SLO for several years and once I was introduced to Judy, it was easy to want to come down here,” Forensich said with a laugh.

“Once my son was done with high school and I had the opportunity to do whatever I wanted, I knew living here was what I wanted.”

It has been about five months since Forensich took over in February, and in that time she has hit the ground running. Cal Poly hosted its eighth annual AngelCon this past May and had well over 150 people in attendance.

GreenSight Technologies, a company utilizing AI-driven automation for electronics recycling and IT asset disposition facilities, won the 2025 AngelCon on May 1 and took home $125,000 in funding raised from 17 investors.

“Jumping right into the busiest time of the year with AngelCon, it was a whirlwind these first three months, but I think we pulled it off well,” Forensich told me after the event AngelCon is going through the accelerator program right now.

On top of that, Forensich is also helping the program move into its new home.

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo announced plans to revitalize 1144 Chorro St. downtown with the hopes of expanding the university’s role in developing innovators and entrepreneurs and furthering regional economic development.

The redeveloped space will house the existing downtown locations of the Cal Poly Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CIE) and the Cal Poly Mustang Shop.

Moreover, the space will expand access and collaboration among economic development partners, students, faculty, local entrepreneurs, and startups in emerging industries.

“It has been an exciting five months and I am hoping it turns to an exciting five-plus years at least,” Forensich said.

• Jorge Mercado is the co-managing editor of the Pacific Coast Business Times and covers the technology landscape across the Central Coast. He can be reached at jmercado@pacbiztimes.com.