A challenging, fast paced, exciting, and rewarding work environment
Pros
SOE has fantastic employees that genuinely care about the work that they do and making an impact. There is a culture to teach and mentor new hires and interns, and an investment in the company to develop the best engineers possible. SOE engineers work on projects for clients across a wide variety of sectors providing opportunities to learn a lot. A second office in Seattle recently opened to aid in expanding outside of Aerospace contracts, once the most common sector of projects at SOE. Engineers here are not just EE, ME, etc. Many engineers perform tasks outside of their traditional role on projects and internally. This allows individuals to further expand their knowledge outside of their discipline, and grow. Engineers are nearly generalists and are encouraged and expected to be able to talk outside of their area of expertise.
Cons
SOE is still a small company, but growing like crazy. Internal infrastructure takes a back seat to project outputs, and thus processes and standards are variable and in flux. This can be challenging when first getting hired and trying to spin up and learn the company. In an effort to win contracts and build reputability, SOE tries to provide cheaper contracts for clients so that they are won. This often evolves into requests for more hours or delays in projects timeline. SOE work-life balance is highly dynamic. Projects vary in timeline and commitment drastically. As expected considering the clients requests. Resourcing is a growing pain of SOE and engineers don't know their next project until only a week or days in advance, as is common in consulting generally though.
