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| *Ostroff, Fair and Company>>>Technology |
To work as a computer and/or software engineer for the government/military, what skills are required/prefered? |
US/Canadian gov't. Or for the UN, Interpol, and whatnot. I just want to have an idea so I can work on my skills that are required, apart from the programming skills. Also, what would be a typical work day/week for a computer and/or software engineer employed in that institution? Thanks in advance. Ah, some direct experience here. First you need a relevant bachelors degree. It's a requirement from the higher-ups. No hiring manager is allowed to hire someone w/o at least a 4 year degree in a related field. Typical work day is 8 to 6, but as a manager you'll see travel and longer days. Monday thru Friday, off Saturday and Sunday except as a manager w/ an overflow duty (having to get work that's not done, done) A clean record is a must, you will probably have to pass a background check. If you plan to work at a federal-level job as an engineer you'll need a security clearance too. This isn't too tough, you fill out a bunch of forms and they run credit checks and the like and build a risk profile on you. As long as you have a decent financial history and your education and job references check out you should be fine. It helps to have connections within the industry, and the vast majority of positions these days are outsourced to 3rd party companies. This means getting a low level intern or engineering position within a company and meeting other people can clue you into better positions within the same company or even to better jobs at other companies. Most hiring managers would rather have someone come from another firm than hire them green, so a history there will help. Yes, this means that most "government" jobs are actually not with gov't institutions. Those that are tend to be civilian military positions, so you'll need to be comfortable working with military brass. Other than that, no specific skills are required. Tech skills are highly malleable in today's market, so you will be expected to go from one language to another very quickly and be able to learn new languages without substantial training. It generally helps if you have your head up your ***. That seems to work well. Government has it's own success factors - Fast & Cheap. If it works, fine. But don't worry too much about that. They do seem to aspire to mediocrity, so you may need to dumb down to get work for the government. On Monday, I will "celebrate" 20 years in the enterprise software industry. |
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