Vantaggi
Pay, time off, and benefits are good but not great. Coworkers tend to be smart, capable, and dedicated. Depends on your project but contemporary tech, software, and tools are used.
Svantaggi
Offered a Dream Job. Instead spent months on The Bench. I am disgusted that I could be offered employment after one 30-minute interview but never told there would be a second far more arduous search to find an actual project. My offer letter stated I’d be employed as a software developer supporting an intelligence agency. I was never offered that work. Instead I was told to take the first project I was offered regardless of its alignment with my skillset, career goals, or location and that if I didn’t like it I'd be allowed to look for something else after 9 months. Oh and if I left the firm within 18 months I'd have to repay the training cost ($5K). My experience wasn’t unique. I was hired through one of the Tech Excellence programs along with ~10 others. Our first month was a 4-week training course. A month after the course ended, 4 people had been assigned projects. The rest of us were instructed to apply to project openings on workday, i.e. find a job (wait what?). And our applications were for the most part completely ignored. BAH’s recruiters and hiring managers completely ignoring their coworker’s applications and messages is indefensible. If you don’t have an SCI clearance don’t bother trying to be a Data Scientist here. Avoid the “Tech Excellence Programs”. They are a bait-and-switch. You’re a number they can use to bid on proposals.