Veterans, have you ever wondered if a career in defense contracting is right for you? Throughout your career, have you considered defense work but were unsure? As one of the thousands of veterans who have become a Defense Contractor, this article summarizes my contracting experience. My goal is to give you insight into defense work to help you decide if it is something you want to pursue. This article will be something like “a day in the life of” but only a little longer. Also, my career and experience come from primarily working Air Force contracts. However, the knowledge and insights I provide should apply to most government contracts and salaried contracting jobs.
Leaving Active Duty
My story begins when I left active duty Army after spending two years in Bravo Company 4th Bn 31st Infantry Regiment (Pro Patria) and I decided to go to college to get a degree from CU Boulder (Go Buffs).
After my enlistment, I planned to leave the Army behind, but Uncle Sam had other ideas. When I was out-processing, one of the last stops on my clearing checklist was the in-service recruiter’s office. What I thought was going to be a quick “check the box” ended up changing my life substantially. Once inside the in-service recruiter’s office, I met your typical “seasoned” senior NCO, who was assigned recruiting duty. It was his job to convince me to continue my relationship with the Army when I thought for sure I was done. After I presented the Master Sergeant my clearing paperwork, he asked me what I was going to do after I left the Army? I told him I was going to use my GI Bill to go to college in Colorado.
Upon hearing this, he spun his squeaky chair around and opened a filing cabinet drawer stuffed with too many folders (this was pre-internet). He shuffled through the files and then stopped on a folder and pulled out a piece of paper and slowly turned back toward me with a hint of a smile on his face. Then he says to me, “I can give you $5,000 if you join the Colorado Army National Guard while you go to college.” Wow, a $5k bonus for joining the Colorado Guard! I had to think about it (this would be approximately $10k in 2019 dollars).
He proceeded to tell me that college is typically four years long and that I would only need to do two more “short” years after I graduate to complete the six-year enlistment to be eligible for the bonus. It did not take me too long to convince myself that $5k would be an excellent boost to help me get started in school. Too bad I didn’t read the small print that said I would be paid half up front and half upon successful completion of my second year. Darn recruiters. Anyway, I signed the paperwork and moved to Colorado and started college. As a side note, my six-year enlistment with the Colorado National Guard culminated in a 30-year military career, but that is a story for another day.
College Experience and First Job
Being new to college, I did not understand the importance of getting real-world experience in my chosen career field while completing school. As a result, during my summer breaks I did several Army National Guard short tours to make extra money. While this helped my Army career, it did little to help me with my future civilian employment. Had I known better, I would have looked for internships, especially with local defense contractors, so I could get work experience while I was going to college. Several of the leading Department of Defense (DoD) contractors were right in the Boulder / Denver area (Martin Marietta now Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman and Ball Aerospace, to name a few).
Soon enough, four years passed by, and I graduated with a degree in Information Systems and began looking for a job as a computer programmer. Remember how I said I only did Army tours during my college summer breaks, now this came back to haunt me. The thing was, the only real computer programming experience I had was my college projects. Without any practical experience my job prospects were limited.
After three months of job searching and a favor called in by a recruiter I befriended, I was able to land a job with a company called Michael Ricker Pewter. Michael Ricker was a retail artist, and serendipitously his company built their point of sale system with the same programming language I used for my college senior project. A long story short, I worked for Michael Ricker for three years, upgrading his point of sale system and developing several other software applications for the business. Then one day, I was called into Michael’s office, and he told me my computer programs were working well and he thanked me and told me he no longer needed my services. Wow, just like that, I was laid off. Up until then, the only full-time jobs I had were the Army and Michael Ricker. I was new to the civilian job world and did not know how hard it was going to take to get a new job.
First Defense Contracting Job
As fortune would have it, I found a job posting on Compuserve (again pre-internet) for a job with Lockheed Martin in Colorado Springs. As luck would have it, Lockheed had developed a logistics tracking program for the Air Force using the same programming language I used for Michael Ricker. Within three weeks of losing my job, I started as a software engineer for Lockheed Martin with a $7k increase in pay, sweet!
I had never worked as a Defense contractor before, so everything was very new to me. To begin, I received a very good benefits package that included vision, dental, medical, 401k with 4% matching contributions, two weeks vacation, one-week sick leave, 100% tuition reimbursement for additional education as well as corporate discounts for cell phones and a variety of other items.
Also, I discovered Lockheed Martin and many other DoD contractors offer excellent in-house leadership training and they can be quite generous in sending you to commercial professional development training. Moreover, throughout my many years of defense work, my experience is that most DoD contractors provide above-average benefits.
After starting work, I learned defense contracts had an organizational hierarchy similar to that of the military. On large contracts the program manager is like a battalion commander, the section managers (Engineering, Finance, Projects, HR, Finance) are like company commanders, the sub discipline managers (Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, etc.) are like platoon leaders and team leads are like squad leaders. While this structure is not universal it does apply to a lot of contracts. I also discovered a lot of veterans worked as defense contractors. Having an organization structure similar to the military made the job environment familiar, and it was good to work with veterans as we had a shared military experience regardless of branch of service.
Concerning the work, and types of projects defense contractors support, I soon found out defense work spans the spectrum. Contracts can have jobs for mechanics, truck drivers, and field support technicians, as well as programmers, scientists, and engineers. Most jobs are focused on building and sustaining very complex military systems (aircraft, ships, radars, satellites, lasers, missiles, etc.) that directly support our nation’s defense. While some civilian companies work on similar types of large scale and complex systems, I have found working for companies and projects that support our nation’s defense to be very rewarding.
Personally, over my career, I have been able to work on large scale enterprise resource planning, product lifecycle management, and command and control systems. Likewise, I have worked on programs managing information and systems related to satellite tracking, nuclear and conventional weapons effects, and systems supporting the building and launching of rockets, and most recently missile defense.
Defense Contracting Work Environment
I have also learned that a lot of people who take up a career in Defense contracting find a good program and associated contract and stay with it. Some people stay on the same system for the rest of their careers and migrate from one support contract to the next. The work environment on large programs is similar to a small town, and a core cadre of people become experts on the systems. These people provide exemplary service for their companies and the nation. One caveat is sometimes veteran employees get stuck in their ways and are resistant to change. This can be a detriment to the contract and new employees with good ideas. I imagine jobs in the civilian sector experience this too, but I thought it was worth calling out. Now back to the positive aspects of working on a large, multi-year contract. On these types of programs, a big part of the team becomes like your family, and it is great to see them and work with them day in and day out to achieve the mission of the contract.
Early in my career, this happened to me, and I spent fourteen years on the Depot Support II contract, and its follow on the Satellite Control Network Contract. After several years in Defense contracting with one company, I moved contracts to take on more responsibly and try new things. The good thing about Defense contracting is once you learn the culture and fundamentals of your job, it is relatively easy to change companies to explore new career opportunities.
Period of Performance
Now back to my first DoD Contracting job, soon after starting, I learned the contract I was on was a Cost Plus Award Fee (CPAF) contract with a three year period of performance (PoP). See my article “Veterans – Do you understand the fundamentals needed to succeed in a DoD contracting job?” for details on Cost Reimbursable contracts. I asked what a three-year PoP meant? My manager told me that in three years, our company would have to recompete to win the right to continue supporting the Air Force systems we were sustaining and evolving.
I must admit this made me nervous. In the Army, I had a job for the term of my enlistment. Having the chance of losing my job every time a contract came up for re-compete was a little unsettling. Luckily for me, I had a good manager, and he explained if a DoD contractor is performing well, they usually win the follow-on contract. When this happens, everyone usually stays on the contract and continues doing their job. If a DoD contractor loses a contract, the winner usually hires over half of the incumbent team, and people switch companies and continue with their job. This advice has played out accurately over my career as I have stayed on winning contracts and changed DoD contracting companies several times.
I now provide the same guidance for people I mentor, but I also add there may be times in your DoD career where your company does not have any openings for your next career advancement position and you should not be afraid of changing DoD contracting companies to continue to move up the career ladder or seek new challenging opportunities.
If you are a person who does not like uncertainty related to your employment and the prospect of having to change jobs every three to five years seems untenable then a career in DoD contracting may not be a fit for you. However, given the volatility of the civilian job sector it is not unlikely that even with top name companies you may have to change jobs within three to five years. Companies like Leeman Brothers, Sears, and Kodak are just a few examples where employees thought they were set for long term employment, but it did not play out.
Compliance Training
Going back to my first month on the job as a DoD Contractor. One of the first things I discovered was there were a whole lot of new acronyms to learn. In my new hire orientation, I was advised of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and how there were multiple rules defense contractors had to abide by to ensure their companies remained compliant with the law.
After the general FAR overview, I took a class on time tracking and learned how to track and charge my daily work time in 6-minute increments. In DoD contracting, charge numbers are assigned to all the work you do, and you must charge your time correctly. The phrase “charge what you work, and work what you charge” was drilled into me. After timekeeping, I was given several other corporate compliance classes with topics covering conflict of interest, safety, security, handling classified information, purchasing, sexual harassment, etc.). It took 2-3 days of death by PowerPoint before I was introduced to my team and started working. I soon learned that the initial time you take the corporate compliance training is the most time-consuming. After that, you only have to do it annually, and the refresher training is much shorter. Nowadays, corporate compliance training is all web-based, but it still takes a couple of days to complete the first time you do it.
Processes and more Processes
After finishing my compliance training, my team leader introduced me to my team. I was eager to start programming again, but then my team lead told me I had to learn about a new process framework called the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) from Carnegie Mellon University. CMM is a process framework for doing software development, and the DoD had adopted it to help ensure contractors provided quality and timely software to the Government. The model has since evolved into CMMI, and the I stands for Integrated. The model is now expanded to cover both hardware and software development.
The DoD contracting world is big on process standards. In addition to CMM, I also completed training in ISO 9001. ISO 9001 is an international standard that specifies requirements for a quality management system (QMS)1. DoD contractors use ISO 9001 to demonstrate their ability to consistently deliver high-quality products and services. Likewise, I took training on Six Sigma. Six Sigma is a methodology based on statistical analysis rather than guesswork to improve processes with unknown problems2. I also learned Earned Value Management (EVM). Earned value management is a project management technique for measuring project performance and progress.3
My training in these standards did not all occur during my first month on the contract but was spread out over several years. As mentioned, DoD contractors are good about sending their employees to professional development training, and these classes have served me well throughout my career.
During my first month on the job, on top of reviewing and receiving training on CMM processes, I learned about DoD standards for system sustainment. I learned what Systems Requirements Documents (SRD), Operational Requirements Documents (ORD), Statement of Work (SOW), and Task Orders (TO) documents were. Likewise, during my first month, my team lead showed me the requirements documents and the Contract Deliverables (CDRL) and associated Data Item Descriptions (DIDs) related to our work.
My boss also introduced me to the DoD System Development Lifecycle (SDLC). The DoD SDLC is a process framework that breaks down engineering work into discrete phases. It starts with a Systems Requirements Review (SRR) and then proceeds to a Preliminary Design Review (PDR) followed by a Critical Design Review (CDR) then a Build, Integration, and Test phase (BIT) concluding with a Test Readiness Review (TRR) before going to a Factory / Final Acceptance Test (FAT) and in some cases a Site Acceptance Test (SAT). This process is still used today and is sometimes referred to as a “Waterfall process,” meaning it is done serially one step after the other. There are newer Spiral Development and Agile processes, but those came later.
Sustaining Air Force Mission Systems
I also learned about the sustainment of Air Force mission systems. Mission Systems usually have formal specifications and are modified following formal Air Force sustainment / modification processes. The processes include detailed Engineering Change Proposals (ECP) to capture all change requirements, and depending on the magnitude of the change, changes are classified as major modifications or minor modifications. Software requirements are captured as Deficiency Reports (DR) or Change Requests (CR). Next, I learned that most Air Force Mission systems follow a formal test control process. This process categorizes defects into three categories CAT I, CAT II, and CAT III, each with associated remediation rules. Lastly, for some large and complex systems I learned that they require independent test validation by specialized Air Force Test Squadrons.
As mentioned earlier, DoD contracting is big on process and standards just like the military. If during your military career you felt stymied by all the rules and regulations, then you may want to consider a different career sector than DoD contracting. Government rules and the FAR also can inhibit rapid solutions and moving at the speed of the market. So just like the military there are a lot of times in DoD contracting where you have to “hurry up and wait.” For some people, the inflexibility of the FAR and the speed at which certain work items can get done is very frustrating. As a result they usually change careers outside of DoD after a few years.
Government Contracting Business Lifecycle
Now back to my initial DoD contracting job, after my training I finally received my initial work assignments. Then one of the cool things I discovered about doing software development as a contractor is we got to use all the latest software development tools. Open source software was not as prevalent at the time and in my prior company we had a very limited software tool budget. Next, I learned that my team was on a six-month release cycle. This meant we coded for three months and performed system testing and documentation for three months. We followed a Microsoft Project schedule that guided us through the SDLC and completed it with a Final Acceptance Test (FAT). Upon FAT completion, we delivered and installed the software on the Government and end user’s computers. Then after each delivery the process started again. As I am writing this, I feel like a dinosaur as current standards in software development are to get as close to continuous delivery as possible.
Anyway, after my first month on the job I settled into the normal work rhythm of a 42-45 hour workweek with occasional evening and weekend work. I also became aware of the Government contracting business cycle. Daily we would do our work and log our time in our timesheets. Weekly we would meet with our customer to review our project progress and address any issues. Then at the end of the week we would summarize our weekly work activities and accomplishments and submit a Weekly Activity Report (WAR) to our manger. Then every three months, we would provide updates to our manager as input into the Quarterly Program Management Reviews (QPMR) with the customer. This process would repeat each quarter. Then at the beginning of the fiscal year on 1 October, the majority of the annual task orders were renewed for another year. As a result, the last few months of each fiscal year was always a very busy time, and we worked very hard to get everything done by September 30th.
Next, because we were an award fee contract, we submitted our award fee comments twice a year in March and September. In May, we started planning the task orders for the next year. Every year there were threats of funding cuts. As a result, we often wrote mission impact statements to detail what would occur without full project funding. In July and August we would review our budgets and our material needs with our Government project officers and get approval for annual hardware and software procurements. Then the cycle would start again. Presently most DoD sustainment contracts follow a similar business lifecycle. While this business lifecycle may seem routine, every week, month, and year had its challenges and rewards. The familiarity of this lifecycle makes it easy to focus on the work and the mission.
Conclusion
Over the course of my DoD contracting career I have contributed to hundreds of software releases, system upgrades, datacenter upgrades, and system deployments. Each of the projects I have been blessed to work on have contributed in some fashion to our nation’s defense. Along the way I was fortunate to work and make friends with some amazingly talented people. I have also received industry leading professional development training and obtained a master’s degree all paid for by the companies I worked for. Presently, I continue to work as a DoD Contractor and really enjoy the DoD contracting atmosphere and the work.
While DoD contracting may not be for everyone, I sincerely hope my career summary provided you some insight into what a DoD contracting career can be like and the pros and cons of being a DoD contractor. If you are a veteran, who has successfully made the transition to becoming a DoD contractor, feel free to advise of any additional insights positive or negative on your contracting career that may be helpful to other veterans.
Also, according to the latest statistics, each year, nearly 200,000 servicemen and women will separate from active duty in the United States military. If you believe this article would benefit military members or veterans in your network, please share it.
Cheers, Ben @ Defense Careers HQ
1 What is ISO9001:2015 – Quality Management Systems?, American Society for Quality, https://asq.org/quality-resources/so-9001, Accessed 1 Dec 2019
2 What is Six Sigma?, Six Sigma, https://www.6sigma.us/six-sigma.php, Accessed 1 Dec 2019
3 Earned value Management, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management, Accessed 1 Dec 2019