Pros
Great people, well organized, and an overall stable company with a bright future. Healthcare, retirement and bonus structures are great. Relocation assistance possible. If you are retired from another related company, joining ARA would make sense, especially if retired from the armed forces. For recent graduates and those mid-career, it could be a great temporary stop on your career journey.
Cons
Company is too stable and provides little to no opportunity for employees to advance in career. In the past two years alone no one in my division has been promoted, and growth only comes by hiring in retired experts from outside the company without any internal promotions. (To be fair only a couple of people have left, probably due to the compensation). If hired after April 1 of a calendar year, you will likely not get the required 1,000 billable hours for the fiscal year ending on September 30 that makes one eligible for receiving a retirement contribution and plan vesting. When considering the company it is important to know that about 1/2 or more of the employees work for ARA on contracts at client locations (onsite) with little to no ability to work on other projects for the company that would get you noticed. This essentially makes ARA nothing more than a technical temp staffing contractor. In these cases, such a person is then subject to the client's hours/scheduling, therefore loosing some of the advertised scheduling flexibility and even worse making use of FMLA leave time a dangerous proposition to the employee (since client did not hire ARA to have that onsite person then be away and then creating a business case for ARA letting that person go; to be fair I have not seen this happen but observed no one actually use FMLA when they were entitled to it). In some technical positions, one may quickly become too difficult to replace and thus a liability to the company's bottom line to be promoted.