Job searching can be a little bit like house hunting. It’s usually best to look for a house when you don’t need one, and it’s the same with the job search. Keeping your eye on the landscape helps you know where to land when you enter the field. Key acquisitions – like Chantilly, VA-based Parsons Corp. acquiring Colorado-based aerospace firm Braxton Science & Technology Group LLC (BSTG) can give you an overview of the landscape. This is Parsons fourth acquisition since October 2018, making it clear that Parsons is continually growing its reach. BSTG has contracts within the DoD and intelligence community, and they also support the U.S. Space Force. BSTG joins Parsons’ space and geospatial solutions market. When it comes down to finding the right job, sometimes, it’s following your interests and lining them up with an organization that provides a lot of opportunities to move around and grow.
Contract Opportunities to Watch
| Perspecta | Another Chantilly, VA-based company continues to win awards. Perspecta was recently awarded a 201.5 million contract with the Defense Information System Agency (DISA) to continue to provide technical services on its Global Content Delivery Services (GCDS) II program. This contract award continues Perspecta’s support of the military services, combatant commands, and DoD agencies’ network storage, streaming, secure content delivery, web application, and other related technical service. It’s a job that Perspecta has been doing since 2006, when they won their first GCDS award.
“The global reach of the [Department of Defense] means it must have the most secure, reliable and rapid capability for delivering content anywhere. This award is a testament to our strong performance on the GCDS I program,” said Jeff Bohling, senior vice president and general manager of Perspecta’s defense group, in a statement. |
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Key Employer in the Cleared Industry
| Booz Allen | What keeps clearance-level experts at Booz Allen? They hire for a career, not just a contract, and provide you with room to explore your interests and passions. Hear more from Booz Allen teammates and how you can work with them to make the world a better place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9upTdes7W-s&feature=emb_logo Ready to use your security clearance for something meaningful? Explore career opportunities at careers.boozallen.com. Join us. The world can’t wait. |
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Cleared Job of the Week
| Technical Writer | As a writer, I’m a little partial to advocating for the technical writer. The opportunities for the technical writer are wide within the cleared industry. With projects, there will always be documentation. While a project manager could take the time to develop all of the necessary documentation, the best way to make sure your documentation not only represents your organization well to the client but also actually communicates something meaningful is to hire a technical writer. The writing may be dry; however, having a writer on the team brings the gift of clarity to documentation.
You can gain entry to some cleared technical writing positions with just a Secret clearance, a year of experience, and a bachelor’s degree in communications, journalism, english, business, or something similar. However, other positions are mid career and require a Top Secret clearance and a polygraph. It just depends on the agency and project. Long term trajectory in this field would be for someone who wants to take on an internal leadership role within their organization, as well as support program documentation. This is a great skill set when it comes to proposal writing, as well. Technical writers may not see large compensation jumps if they don’t take on leadership roles, but because this job is a better fit for the organized personality, it’s also a role that progresses smoothly into project management or leadership positions. |
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Growth Opportunities
Whether your dream is to get a job as a robotics engineer or just support the field, the opportunities are there. Not only can you support agencies like NASA, but the field is exploding as we continually look to strengthen our technology responses against our peer adversaries. Contractors like Booz Allen, Northrop Grumman, or Raytheon all play different roles in the robotics field, as well as many other defense contractors. Or if you prefer to work directly for the federal government, check out listings at DARPA, NSF, and of course, NASA. Whether you’ve just discovered your love for coding and developing algorithms or you’ve always been a part of the robotics team world, the future for this field is growing and bright. It’s not too late to join the robotics movement.
