The larger defense contractors have issues paying software engineers remotely close to private industry nowadays. In certain regions of the US the software market is dominated by defense though.
Back in the early 2000s I know of some J2EE architects that pulled $200k as defense contractors once they got a Sun certification. The certification and diploma mill market in the US is driven squarely by big federally funded institutions that value paper over experience because they don’t know how to measure ability any better than SV Leetcode questions would assess.
Of defense contractors I’ve seen pay tables for in the DC area, LM and Raytheon paid worse for senior engineers than slightly smaller, more specialized companies but they certainly had a lot more overhead and administrative positions available that were possible to reach just by having a PhD even if it’s not related to engineering or STEM in general at all (political science obviously makes sense here as valuable, for example).
But under DHS you can hit $200k+ as a contractor for anything that has “cyber” attached to its name these days. But for the most part, the high payout days for software engineers in defense are over which is what led me to leaving the DC area years ago to stick with better pay and work environment with private sector. A TS is a pain and the pay bump is a joke compared to RSUs. I’ll take leetcode grinding for months to get a stack of RSUs and marketable engineering skills over the demonstrably useless charade of the DoD security theater practices with none of the employment benefits besides some smug, self-assured sense of patriotism.
Most of the higher paid contractors in DoD aren’t engineers - they’ve usually been intelligence officer trainers and skilled and experienced warfighters (well past $400k, much of it untaxed).
You can get the pay increase associated with "cyber" in the name without having to live in the costly DC area. That works for me, supporting 12 kids on a single income. The work-life balance is to be appreciated as well, with 40-hour weeks (or paid overtime) and flexible hours.
Back in the early 2000s I know of some J2EE architects that pulled $200k as defense contractors once they got a Sun certification. The certification and diploma mill market in the US is driven squarely by big federally funded institutions that value paper over experience because they don’t know how to measure ability any better than SV Leetcode questions would assess.
Of defense contractors I’ve seen pay tables for in the DC area, LM and Raytheon paid worse for senior engineers than slightly smaller, more specialized companies but they certainly had a lot more overhead and administrative positions available that were possible to reach just by having a PhD even if it’s not related to engineering or STEM in general at all (political science obviously makes sense here as valuable, for example).
But under DHS you can hit $200k+ as a contractor for anything that has “cyber” attached to its name these days. But for the most part, the high payout days for software engineers in defense are over which is what led me to leaving the DC area years ago to stick with better pay and work environment with private sector. A TS is a pain and the pay bump is a joke compared to RSUs. I’ll take leetcode grinding for months to get a stack of RSUs and marketable engineering skills over the demonstrably useless charade of the DoD security theater practices with none of the employment benefits besides some smug, self-assured sense of patriotism.
Most of the higher paid contractors in DoD aren’t engineers - they’ve usually been intelligence officer trainers and skilled and experienced warfighters (well past $400k, much of it untaxed).