employer cover photo
employer logo
employer logo

Charles River Analytics

Is this your company?

Great Environment, Great Jobs for Self-Directed people - Anonymous employee Charles River Analytics Employee Review

5.0
Jun 29, 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I have had some pretty horrible past experiences and find the culture here to be terrific. Everyone I have encountered is nice and *kind*. Everyone has been willing to help whenever I ask for something. HR has made some big changes and are continuing to implement changes to help new people get up to speed. They also were relatively transparent about how they came to my salary and are focused on maintaining parity in salary for everyone at the same level of responsibility/experience, including ensuring that there is no gender pay gap here. I found their offer to be great, slightly higher than other offers I've gotten and with the best benefits around on top of that. Per other reviews, they are slowly putting better management practices into place. I'll be meeting with my manager next week to discuss career growth and they are trying to make sure managers focus on the 5-10 year growth as well as the 1 year growth. Overall, they are still a work in progress (and intend to always be), but are always striving to improve and listen to employees. I couldn't ask for a better place to work.

Cons

If you are not used to working in a self-directed environment, you will likely struggle here. Sharing of some kinds of institutional knowledge, especially about past projects, is not very good, although they are trying to find better solutions to this. As with most tech adjacent companies, there are usually fewer women in the room than men, but the company seems to be trying to change that. Several of the new hires have been women in more senior positions (and the president is a woman).

Explore other reviews about Charles River Analytics

5.0
May 20, 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

CRA is a great company to work with. The flexibility, and overall company culture is hard to find these days.

Cons

Management should reach check in with employees more often.

4.0
Jun 28, 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

R&D environment with many small projects and ‘all hands on deck’ culture is good for gaining exposure to new technologies, building up a diverse skillset and learning about the business side of R&D. Opportunities for self-direction and ownership for enthusiastic proposal writers. Excellent opportunity for early career engineers/scientists hoping to build up a technical foundation.

Cons

As the company’s bread & butter, R&D proposal wins are King, and technical excellence is valued only insofar as it enables these wins. Funding opportunities are typically small and fragmented, rarely offering room for achieving the critical mass needed to truly create something of lasting value/impact. Good for research and learning, poor for developing products. The company has made unusual decisions regarding the administration of its IT infrastructure in a bid to mimic their expectation of how larger defense primes would operate, sacrificing development speed and thereby one of the few advantages a small business has over larger established players. The company has become highly adverse to taking on risk, and which is a major hurdle to growth.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All