Companies in Washington, DC: 159,002 businesses, the defense headquarters ring and the District's top 200 employers

This page is for anyone trying to map the companies in Washington, DC and its suburbs: job seekers, contractors looking for prime partners, people choosing a supplier, and B2B sellers deciding whether to work the District, Northern Virginia or suburban Maryland. It covers the biggest headquarters, the District's own employer list, the business counts by county and sector, and the registries in all three jurisdictions.

The biggest companies headquartered around Washington

Ranked by revenue in each company's latest 10-K, among SEC-registered companies whose 10-K cover gives a principal executive office in the metro:

The 20 reported $626.63 billion. For the financial companies we use net revenue, not interest income: Capital One's is net interest income plus non-interest income ($42.88 billion plus $10.56 billion), Fannie Mae's the same ($28.61 billion plus $551 million, against $158.62 billion of interest income), and Freddie Mac's the net revenues it reports. Fannie Mae's 10-K notes that it has been in conservatorship since 2008 and that its shares now trade only over the counter. SAIC ($7.26 billion), Host Hotels & Resorts ($6.11 billion), Maximus ($5.43 billion), Graham Holdings ($4.91 billion) and Carlyle ($4.78 billion), which is based in the District, come next.

Only four of the top 20 are inside the District. The pattern is a ring of contractors around the federal customer: Boeing, RTX, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Leidos, Amentum, Booz Allen and CACI reported $399.97 billion between them, 63.8% of the total, and eight of the nine are in Northern Virginia.

The District's top 200 employers

The DC Department of Employment Services (DOES) publishes a ranked list of the District's 200 largest employers each year as a spreadsheet. The 2026 list (first quarter of 2026) gives size classes, not headcounts. The top 15, all with 1,000 or more employees:

Thirty-three employers on the list have 1,000 or more workers, and 16 of them are schools, universities, hospitals or physician groups. Fannie Mae (18th), The Washington Post, Covington & Burling and Deloitte Consulting are among the largest companies. Three professional employer organizations (Insperity, Justworks and TriNet) are on the list; a PEO is the employer of record for staff at many small client firms, so treat those entries as groups of small businesses rather than single workplaces. Neither the federal government nor the DC government appears on the list.

How many businesses are in the Washington region

County Business Patterns (CBP) for the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metro Area (CBSA 47900), all sectors, 2023:

Fairfax County has more businesses and more private jobs than the District. Arlington's workplaces average 25.2 employees and the District's 23.5, against 15.9 in Montgomery County. By size, the metro has 132,793 establishments with 1 to 19 employees, 21,511 with 20 to 99 and 4,698 with 100 or more, including 171 with 1,000 or more. CBP covers private employers only: it leaves out the federal government, state and local government and the self-employed, and measures employment in the pay period including March 12, 2023.

What Washington businesses do

Average pay is our calculation. Professional services is 22.1% of private employment, and its two biggest pieces, computer systems design and management consulting, are where federal contract work sits. Inside the District, law offices average $234,157 and associations and advocacy groups (NAICS 8139) employ 32,600 people at 1,235 establishments.

How to check a Washington-area company

The region spans three jurisdictions, so check the right one:

For a federal contractor, also check its registration and past awards on the federal government's contracting systems before you rely on claims of contract work.

Prospecting Washington's associations

Associations are a market few sellers target on purpose. The metro has 2,585 business, professional, labor and political organizations, nearly half of them in the District.

Illustrative example. The company, prices and results are fictional; the counts are from CBP 2023.

Potomac Events (potomacevents.example) sells registration, badging and lead retrieval for conferences.

• Associations and similar organizations (NAICS 8139) in the metro with 20 to 249 employees: 335 + 143 + 80 = 558.
• It assumes half run a paid annual conference or trade show: about 279.
• Winning 10 in the first year at $25,000 per event is $250,000.

The buyer is the director of meetings or the chief operating officer, and the window is 12 to 18 months before the event, when venue contracts are signed. Finding which of the 558 run their own shows, and when, is the research Bebop does for each organization.

Subject: Registration for [Association]'s [year] annual meeting

Hi [first name],

Most associations we talk to are still stitching registration, badges and exhibitor lead scans together from three vendors, and the attendee data ends up in three places.

We run all three for DC-area associations, with the data flowing straight into your membership system. Could I send a walkthrough of how a show your size ran on it last spring?

[Your name], Potomac Events

Next step: for the contractors in this market, see consulting firms in Washington, DC.