Non-Profit by Name, but Corporate by Nature - Anonymous employee RTI International Employee Review

3.0
Jun 19, 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Generally, good people working for them. Global presence. Values diversity, equity, and inclusion. Competitive PTO.

Cons

Little room for advancement for jobs outside of research. Policies are followed and interpreted differently by manager. PTO is competitive, but using it is difficult, with "unspoken" blackout dates (i.e., weeks to months) for certain employees/groups. Very top heavy on the management side. Upper management seemed to have no idea what some of the groups and even the individual people they managed actually did. Overall, company was too focused on securing federal contracts and didn't learn it's lesson during the first trump administration that they needed to diversify. This led to mass layoffs that don't seem to have an end in sight.

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5.0
Jun 8, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

RTI has a good mission

Cons

Adaptation to sudden federal funding loss.

3.0
Jun 15, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Remote work and reasonable working hours

Cons

If you're a PhD who enjoys research and hopes to use empirical research skills at a research institute, you'll likely be disappointed as I was. Projects in my business unit were largely implementation projects that required very little creativity or data analysis. I was told by my manager that empirical-research projects are harder to come by and when those opportunities do arise, everyone wants them. Even then, project directors are very unwilling (in my experience) to let you branch out to other projects. Using any overhead time to work on your own research is also discouraged, so I ended up working on manuscripts in my personal time. And there's no funding to attend conferences either. On top of all of this, constant layoffs create an aura of uncertainty and the feeling that you're lucky to even be there even when compensation for similar roles in private sector is far better.

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