Missile Defense Agency (employee, secretary, interviews, jobs)

[mem10]

Anyone have any experience working with or for the Missile Defense Agency? I'm interested in how people like it there. Whether or not the pay and benifits are good. Whether or not the work is exciting. Thanks in advance for your help.

[proudmommy]

It's a government job with government employee benefits. Much (most?) of that work is moving to Huntsville, AL. A couple other places with a big MDA presence are Arlington VA, Colorado Springs, Vandenberg, Fort Greeley Alaska, and Kwajalein.
Most of the work requires at least a secret clearance.
The overwhelming majority of engineering level employees have some military experience.
The MDA works on the BMDS which is a $10B (that's billion with a "B") per year program, that's right per year.

[mem10]

THanks for your response. I don't get a notification that one has responded to my post. So sorry for the latency. I never had a "government job" so I'm not sure what that means in terms of the culture and whether or not the benifits are as good as private sector defense contractors.

[Charles]

MISSILE DEFENSE AGENCY
MDA DIGEST
APRIL 6, 2011

A daily compilation of news stories from around the world dealing with
missile defense or of interest to the missile defense community. Use of
articles does not reflect official endorsement.

NEWS ARTICLES

1) MDA TO SAVE $225 MILLION BY CUTTING 1,000 CONTRACTOR SUPPORT
POSITIONS, Inside Missile Defense, Apr 6, 2011. The Missile Defense
Agency plans to save $225 million by cutting 1,000 contractor positions
by the end of fiscal year 2012 as part of Defense Secretary Robert
Gates' efficiency initiative. The planned MDA contractor reductions,
laid out in a March 14 memo...are greater than what Gates projected at
the start of the year. During a Jan. 6 press briefing, Gates announced
that MDA planned to cut more than 360 contractor positions, noting that
the Defense Department has become "far too reliant" on contractors to
perform functions that could be done in-house. "We found more savings
than we originally anticipated," MDA spokesman Rick Lehner told Inside
the Pentagon, citing the agency's complete revamping of its contract
system. He said the new structure "is resulting in greater savings
because of the consolidation of all the support contracts we used to
have." Lehner explained that these contractor numbers are generated
through formulas determining how much money would go to contractor
manyears, overhead and benefits...As part of the newly announced plan,
MDA would save $112.5 million in both FY-11 and FY-12 by reducing the
number of contractor support positions by 500 positions each year. MDA
will be left with about 4,000 support contractors across the country,
most of them in Huntsville, AL, and Colorado Springs, CO, Lehner
said...These reductions were achieved through a new Missile Defense
Agency Engineering and Support Services (MiDAESS) structure, a
"cost-effective vehicle that has resulted, and will continue to result,
in the need for a reduced number of support contractors," according to
Lehner...Lehner said that the entire support contractor support
structure has been changed with the MiDAESS approach, which has
consolidated more than 200 support contracts into functional areas...He
noted that these reductions do not mean that 1,000 people are being
fired. Rather, DOD has saved money that would otherwise go to supporting
these contracts...


8) BMD CUT WARNING, Inside Defense, Apr 6, 2011. While the Missile
Defense Agency's fiscal year 2012 budget request "may look pretty good,"
even with a $200 million increase over the FY-11 requested level, don't
be fooled, House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee Chairman
Michael Turner (R-OH) warned...I ask you to look at the outyear funding
profile. It is $2.4 billion less than the same outyear projection from a
year ago...MDA attributes this to efficiencies, but one has to seriously
question the assumptions MDA is making to get these efficiencies. For
example, MDA is planning to consolidate and reduce testing, implement
multiyear procurement strategies, which require universal approval,
revise program cost estimates, reduce engineering services, reduce
intelligence support, and cut contractors. Any cuts affecting mission
that are masked as efficiency will hit serious resistance in Congress.

[mem10]

Very helpful Charles. How do I suscribe to the MDA Digest?

[mem10]

Evidently there's this big push for insourcing in the MDA, meaning getting rid of contractor(SETA) support and adding more civil employees to replace them. Any insight

[coolcats]

i work for a defense contractor that supports mda. our funding has been slashed the last 2 years. it finally stabilized this year. But i'm leaving for an unrelated company because i'm not convinced things will stay stable.

[mem10]

Coolcats I hear yah. I'm assuming you're and engineer? Are you having any luck finding jobs outside of the defense industry. I would like get out of defense as well given the budget issues as of late but I don't know what to expect in the commercial sector

[coolcats]

Originally Posted by mem10

Coolcats I hear yah. I'm assuming you're and engineer? Are you having any luck finding jobs outside of the defense industry. I would like get out of defense as well given the budget issues as of late but I don't know what to expect in the commercial sector

Actually, I am in contracts and finance. Yes, I finally found a job with a software company. I probably had a dozen interviews over the last two years. A couple places expressed interest after the first interview, but it was always at a 25-40%% pay cut. This latest company actually offered me a slight raise.

I have had a half-dozen people at my defense contractor job say they wish they could get out.