We are honoured to have our work recognised by the King’s Award for Enterprise. Acknowledgement in the International Trade category signals our pursuit of excellence in service to our global customers, partners and end-users.
OpenWorks was founded in 2015 by five friends with a shared passion for exceptional engineering and a determination to build upon the North East of England’s legacy for defence and security innovation.
Our Vision products (Vision Flex, Vision Pace and Vision Guard) deliver ultra-high-performance, real-time detection, tracking, identification and targeting of dynamic threats, including maliciously deployed drones and uncrewed vessels.
In recent years, we have achieved significant growth across the business, driven by innovation and strong international demand. Approximately 90% of our annual sales are attributable to export, spanning Central Europe, the Nordic region, the United States, Asia and Oceania. This global footprint highlights both the relevance of our technology and the trust placed in us by defence and security forces worldwide.
We collaborate with leading international system integrators who include our products in comprehensive counter-drone solutions alongside complementary detection and mitigation technologies. These partnerships extend our reach while allowing us to remain focused on continuous product evolution. Our modular, configurable approach ensures that our systems consistently perform at peak capability in the most demanding operational environments.
Our workforce has more than doubled since the beginning of 2025, strengthening our abilities across Intelligence and Autonomy, Customer Service and Technical Support, Engineering, People and Talent and Strategic Marketing and Communications. This expansion allows us to continually serve the evolving needs of our global customer base.
Despite global reach, we remain firmly rooted in the North East, contributing to regional economic growth via skilled job creation in a rural community. We actively engage with local schools through STEAM initiatives, uphold our commitments under the Armed Forces Covenant, and pro-actively recruit veterans; nearly 10% of our employees have backgrounds in the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.
“OpenWorks has scaled rapidly in the last three years to meet global demand for systems that can detect, track, identify and effectively target nuisance and malicious drones. Receiving the King’s Award for Enterprise in the international trade category is a huge achievement and a great honour; it recognises our team’s dedication to developing and supporting solutions that make a real difference to NATO and its allies. I’m really proud of what we’ve all achieved together, and of what we continue to build to provide enhanced situational awareness through AI to defence and security forces. Exporting isn’t straightforward, but it has certainly exposed us to many different forces that have built strength and experience into OpenWorks.”
Chris Down, Chief Executive Officer at OpenWorks Engineering
The King’s Award, now in its 60th year with only 185 companies recognised across the UK this year, is a rigorous benchmark of excellence. For OpenWorks, it is both validation and momentum. We are scaling with intent, advancing our capabilities, deepening our partnerships, and working with ambition to develop technology that makes a difference.
