This is a list of notable companies headquartered in Northern Virginia. The majority of the following companies are located in Fairfax County and Loudoun County the most populous jurisdictions in Northern Virginia, Virginia state, and the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. Companies with a McLean or Vienna address are often located in Tysons Corner; "Tysons Corner" was not available as a postal address until 2011.
Government contracting companies (including defense contracting companies) may be involved in various fields, such as financial services, healthcare, information technology, mercenaries, science, and space technology, sometimes all within the same company. Some of the following companies may only derive a minority of their income from government contracting, but are listed here for organizational purposes.
Professional/trade organizations
These are companies based outside the U.S. with a division headquartered in Northern Virginia.
The following companies have major regional offices located in the Dulles Technology Corridor:
America Online was headquartered in Northern Virginia during the company's Internet service provider heyday in the 1990s. In the 2000s several Fortune 500 companies relocated from California to Northern Virginia, including Computer Sciences Corporation, Hilton Hotels Corporation, Northrop Grumman, and Science Applications International Corporation.
Active companies formerly headquartered in the region include AOL,Sallie Mae, Sigarms Inc., and US Airways. Defunct companies that were headquartered in the region include BearingPoint, Braddock Dunn & McDonald, Capital Airlines, Erol's, GeoEye, Hecht's, MCI Inc., Mobil, Mythic Entertainment, Nextel, Proxicom, PSINet, TechAmerica, TerreStar Corporation, UUNET, and Voxant.
Fairfax County, officially the County of Fairfax, is a county in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is part of Northern Virginia and borders both the city of Alexandria and Arlington County and forms part of the suburban ring of Washington, D.C., the nation's capital. The county is predominantly suburban in character with some urban and rural pockets.
Tysons, also known as Tysons Corner, is a census-designated place (CDP) in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, spanning from the corner of SR 123 and SR 7. It is part of the Washington metropolitan area and located in Northern Virginia between McLean and Vienna along the I-495.
The Washington–Baltimore combined metropolitan statistical area is a statistical area including the overlapping metropolitan areas of Washington, D.C. and of Baltimore. The region includes Central Maryland, Northern Virginia, three counties in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, and one county in south-central Pennsylvania. It is the most educated, highest-income, and third-largest combined statistical area in the United States behind New York City–Newark, NJ and Los Angeles–Long Beach.
Northern Virginia, locally referred to as NOVA or NoVA, comprises several counties and independent cities in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. The region radiates westward and southward from Washington, D.C. With 3,257,133 people as of 2023 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the region includes 37.37 percent of Virginia's total population. It is the most populous region of both Virginia and the Washington metropolitan area.
The Fairfax County Public Schools system (FCPS) is a school division in the U.S. commonwealth of Virginia. It is a branch of the Fairfax County government which administers public schools in Fairfax County and the City of Fairfax. FCPS's headquarters is located in the Gatehouse Administration Center in Merrifield, an unincorporated section of the county near the city of Falls Church; the headquarters has a Falls Church address but is not within the city limits.
The Diocese of Arlington is a Latin diocese of the Catholic Church in Northern Virginia in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The Cathedral of St. Thomas More is the mother church of the diocese.
Fairfax Connector is a public bus service provided by Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, and is managed by the county government. The bus system provides service within Fairfax County, and connects to Metrobus, Metrorail stations, Virginia Railway Express, and other local bus systems. Fairfax Connector serves all of Fairfax Metrorail Stations, the city of Alexandria, the city of Fairfax, the Washington Dulles International Airport, and the Pentagon Metrorail station. In 2023, the system had a ridership of 8,986,900, or about 30,200 per weekday as of the fourth quarter of 2023.
Virginia State Route 7 (VA 7) is a major primary state highway and busy commuter route in northern Virginia, United States. It travels southeast from downtown Winchester to SR 400 in downtown Alexandria. Its route largely parallels those of the Washington & Old Dominion Trail and the Potomac River. Between its western terminus and Interstate 395 (I-395), SR 7 is part of the National Highway System. In 1968, the Virginia State Highway Commission designated the road as the "Harry Flood Byrd Highway" between Alexandria and Winchester to commemorate Harry F. Byrd Sr. (1887–1966).
The Fairfax County Public Library (FCPL) is a public library system comprising 8 regional libraries, 14 community libraries and the Access Services Library Branch, which removes barriers to library services for people with disabilities. FCPL is headquartered in Suite 324 of The Fairfax County Government Center in unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, United States.
The Northern Virginia Scholastic Hockey League (NVSHL) is a non-affiliated high school and middle school ice hockey league comprising teams from the Northern Virginia Area including Fairfax County, Prince William County, Loudoun County, Arlington County, Stafford County, Fauquier County, and the cities of Manassas and Alexandria. The NVSHL staff and board of directors includes a combination of coaches, parents, team representatives, referee, and rink supervisors. There are also many members who are not affiliated with and particular team or organization. The current league executive director is Grey Bullen, and its assistant executive director is Jeff Nygaard. Bullen joined the league after Bud Sterling served the same capacity for the previous two seasons. Prior to that, the league was headed by Nygaard, who brought the league from being a part of the MSHL to its own entity, the NVSHL. Teams play a ten-game regular season, followed by a multi-round single elimination playoff tournament to determine the league champion. In the end, the league winner will have played either 13 or 14 games, depending on whether they received a bye in the first round.
The Silver Line is a rapid transit line of the Washington Metro system, consisting of 34 stations in Loudoun County, Fairfax County and Arlington County, Virginia, Washington, D.C., as well as Prince George's County, Maryland. The Silver Line runs from Ashburn in Virginia to Downtown Largo in Maryland. Five stations, from both lines' eastern terminus at Downtown Largo to Benning Road, are shared with the Blue Line alone; thirteen stations, from Stadium–Armory to Rosslyn, with both the Orange Line and Blue Lines; and five stations from Court House to East Falls Church with the Orange Line alone. Only the five stations of Phase 1, which began service on July 26, 2014, and the six stations of Phase 2, which began service on November 15, 2022, are exclusive to the Silver Line.
The Liberty District is a high school district in the state of Virginia that includes schools from Northern Virginia.
The Concorde District is a high school district in the state of Virginia that includes public schools from Fairfax County. It is widely regarded as one of the most competitive districts in the Virginia High School League (VHSL).
The Dulles Technology Corridor is a business cluster containing many defense and technology companies, located in Northern Virginia near Washington Dulles International Airport. The area was called "The Silicon Valley of the East" by Atlantic magazine. It was dubbed the "Netplex" in a 1993 article by Fortune magazine. Another article in 2000 claimed that the area contained "vital electronic pathways that carry more than half of all traffic on the Internet. The region is home to more telecom and satellite companies than any other place on earth."
Area codes 703 and 571 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for Northern Virginia, including the independent cities of Alexandria, Fairfax, Falls Church, Manassas, and Manassas Park, as well as all of Arlington and Fairfax counties and parts of Fauquier, Loudoun, and Prince William counties. Area code 703 was created as one of the eighty-six original North American area codes in October 1947, and originally served the entire Commonwealth of Virginia. Area code 571 was created on March 1, 2000, to form an overlay plan with 703. The headquarters for The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Virginia was at 703 East Grace Street, Richmond, Virginia.
The Fairfax Times is a weekly newspaper published in Reston, Virginia which covers Fairfax County, Virginia.
The Group 6A North Region was a division of the Virginia High School League. Along with the 6A South Region, it consisted of the largest high schools in Virginia. The region was formed in 2013 when the VHSL adopted a six classification format and eliminated the previous three classification system. It is a successor to the AAA Northern Region. The conference system was scrapped prior to the 2017–18 academic year, reverting the previous district. Regions were also renamed, with schools in the 6A North Region distributed into Group 6A Regions C& D.
The Potomac District is a high school conference in the United States Virginia High School League that is made up of mostly schools from Loudoun County that have a high enrollment capacity.
The economy of the Washington metropolitan area includes the economy of Washington, D.C., and its suburbs, including parts of Maryland, all of Northern Virginia, and Jefferson County, West Virginia. In 2022, the DC metro area had the country's fifth-highest gross metropolitan product, at $541 billion. The region's economy is highly diverse and includes the principal industries of the US federal government, tourism, information technology, research, hospitality, news media, and bioscience.