Boise, April 18, 2024.
Solid State Operation Inc. announced this week the appointment of Jeremy Armstrong as its new Chief Executive Officer. Armstrong will replace company founder Gregg Tahmisian who will retain his seat on the company board and move into a research and advising role.
Armstrong was Solid State’s Chief Technology Officer from 2020-2022 and has over a dozen years of experience in the government software space. As Solid State CTO, Armstrong led teams of dozens of Boise’s top technologists in producing groundbreaking products and process automation in diverse areas including cloud security, chatbots, DevOps, and marketplace solutions such as Solid State’s flagship Harbor|9 Platform.
Armstrong attended Boise State University and American Intercontinental University, graduating with a B.S. in Information Technology.
Prior to his tenure at Solid State, Armstrong was an influential architect and engineer of the successful Idaho Unemployment System (iUS) for the Idaho Department of Labor from 2011 – 2018. Under Armstrong’s technical guidance, the iUS system won the prestigious Merrill Baumgardner Award for Innovation in Information Technology.
Outgoing CEO, Gregg Tahmisian said, “I couldn’t be more proud to pass the torch to my long-time friend and colleague Jeremy Armstrong. Jeremy’s unique blend of personal integrity, broad technical acumen, drive for growth and change, empathic people skills, and ‘tribal knowledge’ in the space makes him the ideal leader to rebuild Solid State into the powerhouse that we were during the pandemic years.”
Solid State began doing business amidst the pandemic with the immediate goal of helping state agencies provide benefits to unemployed workers displaced by COVID. Solid State provided call center and systems integration services in Alabama and Hawaii during 2020 and 2021.
In 2022, Solid State shifted focus to providing an open, modular software “marketplace” or “store” where government agencies can choose from numerous alternative components to run their systems, thereby increasing competition and lowering prices for government agencies. This shift was prescient as in 2023 the Federal Government implemented it’s Open UI Initiative to “establish a common framework and approach for modular UI system development.”
With nearly 350 employees in 32 states and revenue of $20M in 2020 and $27M in 2021, Solid State was recognized by the Gartner Research Group as one of the 8 largest companies in the unemployment insurance software space.
However, in 2022-2023, Solid State was hamstrung by litigation brought by a former subcontractor. As Solid State looks forward to a successful conclusion to that lawsuit through vindication in court this summer, the appointment of Armstrong signals the company’s commitment to returning to, and exceeding, its former status.
Armstrong commented, “I am committed to building on the existing Solid State foundation and ensuring that the company stays laser-focused on, first and foremost, providing the open, modular software platform consistent with the Federal Government’s Open UI Initiative. It is my goal that in the next five years, Solid State will not just be ‘one of’ but will be THE major provider in the government ‘Marketplace Solutions’ space.”
