Mid-levels beware: Your career can soar or stall depending on which projects you end up on - Anonymous employee RTI International Employee Review

3.0
May 1, 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good work life balance, benefits, telework options. There are some wonderful, bright people there. IF you're lucky enough to end up on the right project you can have autonomy and truly grow and learn alot.

Cons

Pay is far less than it could be. If you end up on the wrong project you can be micromanaged and/or doing work far below your skillset and abilities causing lack of interest, boredom, and a stall in your skills/career. Far too much pressure to bill to client. If you don't have enough work to fill your time you can end up knocking on doors or sending "cold call" emails essentially begging for work or you'll end up using your PTO to cover your time, or worse having to drop down to part-time status until you can find more project work. And when you do find something to do, it's basically the work no one else wanted and 99% of the time tedious and again below your skills and abilities. They continue to hire BS level statisticians to be competitive in price to win contracts leaving MS level statisticians scrambling to find work because they're now considered too expensive. So you end up getting your 2-2.5% increase, which if you stay long enough will get your salary to a comfortable place but then you'll be performing at a below BS level, zapping your confidence and hindering your chances at a promotion or job change. I've come across way too many MS level statisticians with 10-15 years of service at RTI who still don't feel like confident statisticians and feel stuck.

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5.0
Jun 8, 2026
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Pros

RTI has a good mission

Cons

Adaptation to sudden federal funding loss.

3.0
Jul 10, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

Colleagues were usually respectful, hardworking, and competent. Pre-Covid, the RTP campus was a vibrant and collaborative working environment. Some of the (mostly Federal) contracts provided for interesting research and work.

Cons

Perhaps put too many eggs in USAID contract and Federal social sciences baskets. Org's strength used to be hard sciences. RTI's strength was its organizational culture which was severely undermined by the decision to allow almost anyone to work remotely Upper management bends too much to a vocal and political few, helping to sour an excellent working environment. Many faithful and valuable employees now distrust senior management.

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