On Jul. 12, 1945, the Sandia site began as Z Division, the ordnance design, testing, and assembly arm of Los Alamos National Laboratory. It became Sandia Laboratory in 1948 and, on Oct. 5, 1949, Sandia Corp. was established as a Western Electric company to manage the laboratory. A second site was opened in California’s Livermore Valley in 1956.

More than two decades later, in 1979, the U.S. Congress made Sandia a Department of Energy national laboratory. Sandia Corporation became a wholly owned subsidiary of Martin Marietta (later Lockheed Martin Corporation) in 1993.

On May 1, 2017, National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, assumed management of Sandia.