principal software engineer

system engineer

software engineer

senior system engineer

supply chain specialist

Northrop Grumman

I have no problems with my actual job duties, coworkers, or management at any level ((although they occasionally put in some seriously unqualified managers into positions as stepping stones to move them up the ladder (F.R. comes to mind)).  90% of my coworkers are good, cheerful, and intelligent people, as are my immediate manager and his manager.  I enjoy showing up and putting in the work.  There is a lot of potential at Northrop, but it is squandered in many ways.

They talk about a "lean" mindset in manufacturing, but it is just as wasteful and inefficient as anything else.  Keep in mind some of the folks with the lean mentality are the same people who destroyed the auto industry a decade and a half ago.  Workers at various levels give plenty of feedback, but concrete action is rarely taken.   Senior management has plenty of theories and wants their numbers, but they never walk the floor.

Honestly, I've become semi-disengaged as an employee whereas I used to be incredibly actively engaged, enthusiastic, and would offer ideas for continuous improvement (they have idea cards, which are not even read/acknowledged. It's a waste of effort and good-will).  Northrop is lucky to have the unions at BWI, without which turnover would be beyond astronomical, and when you're making precision products you want low turnover, experience and competence.  

Engineer turnover, I'm told, is something around 12%+.  Anecdotally I have friends who are electrical and systems engineers (surprisingly common here in Maryland) at companies like Jacobs, Honeywell, and Raytheon and they tell me they would never bother applying because even at their respective companies and throughout the industry it is apparently well known that Northrop's HR is comically broken.  My own coworkers experience similar frustrations. My gripes below are not unique just to me.

HR at Northrop Grumman is unresponsive.  They don't respond to emails even from current employees, even when their managers are CC'd and one requests a response.  It's impossible to move onto other jobs even with education that Northrop itself paid for!!!  

Individual HR members seem inexperienced, ditzy, and at times dismissive in the very off chance one actually picks up the phone.  They all work from home so there's not even an office you can step into to ask for help or figure out what's going on, so without any real communication life in this regard frustrating.  I doubt they read resumes, and even if they do there is likely a complete inability to translate a person's experience or credentials because they have never worked in the world outside of HR.  Our so-called "HR Business Partners" have never picked up the phone or responded to an e-mail, nor has anyone from their "iMobility" program.  Not ever.  Good intentions I suppose, but the reality on the ground is a joke.

Nepotism is rife and there are even a couple of (toxic) people in lower level management (in BWI for example) who openly brag about having garnered their positions because of their extended-family connections with directors.  This type of nepotism probably borders on a national security issue (I say that jokingly, but it's serious too).  The nepotism here just creates disaffected employees among anyone who doesn't benefit directly from it.  Openly bragging about it just adds salt to the wound and undermines respect for those who should be leaders.

A Typical Day at Work
As a recruiter/sourcer at Northrop Grumman, a typical day involves diving into specialized talent pools—often for highly technical and security-clearance-required roles—while maintaining close communication with hiring managers. I might spend part of the morning refining job postings, scouring professional networks, and using data analytics to pinpoint top candidates. In the afternoon, I often follow up with applicants, coordinate interviews, and work collaboratively with teams to streamline the hiring process.

What I Believe I Learned
Over time, I developed a deep understanding of Northrop Grumman’s core values and the unique skill sets required for mission-critical positions. I sharpened my sourcing strategies for niche roles and learned how to navigate the complexities of security clearances. Additionally, I gained experience in stakeholder management and refined my ability to present compelling candidate profiles to senior leadership.

Management
Management at Northrop Grumman often strikes a balance between structured processes and the autonomy needed to be effective in a recruiter/sourcer role. Leaders typically set clear expectations and timelines, but they also trust you to drive your strategies. Communication channels are open and supportive, especially when hiring priorities shift or a highly specialized skill set becomes urgent.

Workplace Culture
Northrop Grumman’s culture is grounded in innovation, teamwork, and integrity. There’s a collective sense of purpose in contributing to the company’s defense and technology missions. In recruiting, I found that collaboration across departments was strong, with colleagues readily sharing insights and tips. It’s also a place where continuous learning is encouraged, so staying updated on industry trends, HR policies, and emerging technologies is a natural part of the job.

The Hardest Part of the Job
One of the biggest challenges is finding candidates with the right technical expertise and security clearances, which can significantly narrow the talent pool. Meeting urgent deadlines or sudden hiring pushes in specialized areas can feel intense, especially when juggling multiple requisitions. Managing expectations—both with candidates who have lengthy clearance timelines and with hiring managers under pressure to fill roles—adds another layer of complexity.

The Most Enjoyable Part of the Job
Despite the challenges, it’s immensely rewarding to match top talent with roles that contribute to significant, impactful projects. There’s a sense of pride in knowing you’ve helped assemble teams that work on cutting-edge technology and national security. Celebrating successful hires and witnessing new employees thrive in their positions is both personally fulfilling and reinforcing of Northrop Grumman’s mission.

For a company culture that says they innovate and are forward looking and cutting edge, I have never felt that within the company.  Company leadership stresses engagement with employees, but in reality they're setting unrealistic program timelines and schedule and not utilizing standard engineering practices to save time and reduce costs. 

The direct program and department leadership seem even less receptive to forward looking problem solving and solutions development within the company.  Constantly presenting ideas on cost savings by introducing well known continuous improvement standards, I have always been rebuffed by management as the questions that I ask them seem to threaten their livelihood. Driving company cultural change and asking the deep question of "why" has always resulted in "it's been done this way before," leading to the concultion that no one in leadership even cares about improving the product and customer output.  Things stay status quo and there's little ability to advance beyond one's current position. 

NGC is a "know-it-all" leadership culture that bad-mouths those who conflict with the ineffective and unreasonable engineering practices. Instead of solving problems, they're just concerned with the bottom line and their paycheck bonuses necessary to accomplishing their EVMS targets. Those targets are based on outdated program IMSs and the unwillingness to change process to address the issues related to actual costs versus costs of contract bid. 

The customer does a bad job of enforcing contract clauses that require program excellence utilizing ISO and AS 9001 standards. They do not follow up on improving engineering during the EMD program acquisition phases and only seem to focus on the complete deliverable.  The focus has always been delivery without keeping a solid knowledge base and complete documentation that is a standard in engineering practices of all types. 

Good luck to those trying to succeed there. Until company leadership addresses the issues of continuous improvement in the Pre-Milestone A and Pre-Milestone C phases of a program, the company and the government customer will continue to waste millions of dollars.  Don't be surprised to be faced with a wall of opposition if you have novel solutions and novel ways to implement positive change. The bureaucracy alone with implementing an improvement effort might take over 2 years to get initiated, and it will never come from the corporate level. It's always done at the microlevel.  It seems that any suggestions you may have and positive changes you may propose, never leave the circle of your management their their management.  No company-wide efforts to implement a unifying quality and  continuous improvement strategy exists.

NG is recognized as a systems company. Software engineering is under represented within the business. Most of the sponsored trainings are geared toward project management or systems engineering.

Most of the programs in the unclassified area are drying up. The work is moving toward the classified areas, which means no windows, no cellphones, no connection to anything outside of that building. Most software engineers dread working in that area and most often threaten to leave the company when NG forces them to work those programs.

The pay within NG is fair. Most of the engineers are great to work with. Most of the front-line managers get blamed by the tech engineers and the directors. They are grossly underpaid for the amount of pressure on them.

Over the years, benefits have been slowly stripped away. When I first started, there was a good amount of paid holidays, but it's been greatly stripped down since then. There were pensions offered to employees, but those have gone away. The medical insurance premiums have increased dramatically.

The end of year reviews seem to be a game of who is known by who. I've seen engineers get better reviews for ambiguous reasons and I've watched great engineers come out without anything compensation wise.

Our HR rep in the software sector is combative and has a lot of attitude. That makes it difficult to bring up any issues.

I've seen a huge amount of turnover from junior engineers because the software work is not that exciting. Many of the junior engineers left to seek out more exciting work. There were a few years when the migration to other companies outweighed the amount of engineers getting hired.

It's hard to work through the red tape of government software. Most of the software used is outdated, but it can't be modernized because the company stands in its own way. We were tasked with modernizing the software systems, but we couldn't even get cybersecurity or the IT department to cooperate. Of course, you'll get blamed if you miss the deadlines.

Your functional manager sometimes doesn't pay attention or isn't notified in time and the contract you're working will come to an end (unexpectedly for you). If you don't immediately have another project to work, NG will most likely lay you off. R&D as well as existing contracts come and go frequently. Make sure you stay on top of your team lead and functional manager so you don't find yourself unexpectedly let go.

If you want a career in aerospace, I would say NG is a good start, but you'll soon be looking elsewhere.

Many of the jobs are bait & switch. This is understandable if you have to wait a long time to get a clearance so that you can't do the type of work you applied and interviewed for, but this still happens even after you have your clearance and have been with the company for a while. I think a part of the problem is that they are usually short of people and or the roles they need they are not getting (qualified?) applicants for--so you are kind of dropped into these open spots and that's where you're stuck. 

Most work bottlenecks through a final few people, so there is a lot of downtime or no work for a lot of people and then others are always swamped. Sometimes you can volunteer for other work, but I have found that groups often don't let their people do this, so you often just end up doing busy work or nothing at all. You often have to follow up with people multiple time to get information/data that is necessary to your completing a task or project. Sometimes you never get a response. 

A lot of the processes are slow, bureaucratic, which can be frustrating and may mean that some things are not resolved in time if at all. I have worked in groups where someone higher up knows they need something done a month or more in advanced and they won't mention it to the people who have to do it until a day to a few days beforehand--you'll be expected to work late/holidays/weekends to finish it in those cases. This happened a lot with that program. 

There is a lot of delay in getting all of the equipment and access you need to do your job. By the time you get (working) equipment, the permissions/access, network/internet connections, the responses you need to complete the task, the task is either cancelled or it's not even looked at again. This happens even when they know they are getting a new employee months ahead of time--they still will not have all of the equipment, etc., set up, so that person can't really do their work and or often has to figure out on their own what to do, who to contact, the processes to resolve this. 

There is good job security, and depending on your role and or group you can flex your schedule. There's often opportunities to work extra hours for pay (regular salary rate not overtime.) The benefits are decent and probably on par with most of the industry. Raises are slow and you'll most likely have to hop departments and roles to really get a boost. Some groups are really great and share a lot of knowledge. It mostly depends on where you are placed. You get every other Friday off, but most shifts are long with a minimum of 9 hour days. There are also a lot of different locations, so there is opportunity to move around the country if you don't like where you are.

I started at Northrop Aerospace in 1985 way before it became Northrop Grumman. I left in 1992 to go to the Commercial Division when the company split and the Commercial Division was acquired by Vought Aerospace. I have often said since my departure from Northrop Grumman, it was the best work environment I've had the pleasure of being a part of. Just a wonderful, awesome place to work during that time. When one speaks of "teamwork" it was in every sense of the word when I was there. Everyone was invested in your success and people had your back. I was allowed more opportunities there, when just starting out in my career, than I've had since and now I have more education (which I most I received while at Northrop Grumman) and much more experience. A typical day included being a part of creative, brainstorming meeting, attending workshops, on many occasions got to teach soft skills classes, spent countless hours on the shop floor interacting with the mechanics inquiring about what we could do (in human resources) to make their work performance/job better to From management, I learned about teamwork and doing an excellent job and not stopping until the work was done...I learned some of my greatest work ethics at the company. I didn't know it then but Northrop Grumman/Vought has been the measurement stick I've use against every other company I've worked at and so far none has measured up. From my co-workers, I learned about working together collectively to get the job done. When they said it would be done, it was done. We were not only accountable to ourselves but to each other as well. I learned about professionalism from some of the best and brightest people I've ever worked with. The hardest part of the job was leaving on most days because I enjoyed being there and doing what I did so much that I hated to leave. And the most enjoyable part of the job or the time I spent at the company is all the things I've already mentioned. If I only knew then what I know now, more likely than not, I wouldn’t have left. Well I actually was laid off but I could have, if I would have put a lot more effort into it, found another position and stayed. I don’t know how it is to work there now, first hand, even though I’m informed by those who I worked with back then who are still there that things have changed since the time I was employed. I've been away from the company for 13 years, including my time at Vought, but it was the place to be when I worked there and I miss it very much.

As an engineer, the work was rewarding, but very difficult to accomplish. Working with adjacent program offices to get work done was often tedious. I came onto the job and was doing over the shoulder work for nearly a month before I could work on unclassified work, and it took an aggravatingly long time to get access to more confidential work. Most of this is not at the fault of the company, but DoD resources and their ability to move only at a snails pace.

Working at a non-Northrop facility, there was flexibility to choose when to come into work. I opted to maintain a 4/10 schedule, allowing me to take every Friday off. If I so chose, I could flex the time any way I'd like, come in as early and leave as late as I liked, too. This was great as I am a Servicemember in the National Guard serving in a different state; essentially I could make sure I flexed enough time with work to pick out the most affordable air fares for traveling for training. Furthermore, with the onset of COVID-19, the ability to work remotely (at least as a systems engineer) on unclassified work made the job a lot more flexible.

Management working at the same remote location away from the Northrop facilities was great. They are able to empathize with the other employees there and make sure they are taking care of as best as possible. However, all this leads to the negative side of the job - location.

With the job being located at a military installation, quite frankly it seemed like employees would be forgotten or not taken into consideration in Company functions. There was no job culture to be seen in our place of work; it was the usual bout of cube drive-bys and that was really it. Rarely did we see invitations to visit the corporate facility other than for work functions; if there was any kind of morale activity there, employees working at the military installation were given the short end of the stick. Little consideration was taken to compensate us for the travel between base and the corporate facility, which was about a 40 minute drive. We did attempt to raise our concerns, but the normal response is "COVID-19 makes considering everyone more difficult in company functions at the office."

Nonetheless, I think the tradeoff for leniency at our workplace, without daily prying eyes from management, allowed my job to be much more flexible and manageable on my own terms. Seeking a job here, I would recommend employees to highly consider if they would be comfortable with not having the same creature comforts as one might have working at a corporate environment.

Highly specialized job inside Post Office sorting hub fixing and maintaining machines that searched for certain poisonous chemicals in the mail.  ( I didn't work directly FOR the Post Office, though). Northrop is an outside contractor.

Safe, or so I thought for 3 years, because it couldn't be taken away by some joker off the street. I worked alone 99.9% of the time, which I truly loved. Never had to deal with drama queen co-workers. Good, because I tend to tell those kinds of people exactly what I think of them, be they management or otherwise. Cost me a few jobs in my lifetime, though I never regretted doing so.  I still don't.

No one micromanaging you. I did have a manager, but he was regional and rarely stopped by. He could nitpick sometimes, but overall, I liked him. Stellar software & hardware support by engineers in those fields if you needed them.

Job ending 12/31/20 because costs had to be cut on new contract w/ Post Office. My site will be combined and run by the tech in Sioux Falls. No proof, but since I'm decades older than the guy taking it over, I'm not surprised I was the one who got the boot, even though I live far closer to both sites than he does. He also has 16 years in. I had only 3 years.

Never made even close to what I was paid at this job during all my working years. I came out of retirement for this job, and it was only the second job I ever had in my life that I truly liked. I'm pretty heartbroken at losing this job through no fault of my own. It's purely economics.

Company has many things available, but nothing out here, and really, it's geared for younger people, not someone my age. (69). You've got to relocate from where I am to find anything good, and you really need some sort of a degree. I was the rare exception to that rule.

Wages in S. Dakota SUCK, and they always have because it's Right To Work state. I was paid extremely well because the company wasn't located here. Plus, as I said, the job was highly specialized.

I had to pass an FBI-level background check in the beginning. The interview process was tough 3 years ago, and it is brutal now. Not something I wish to endure, so I'm going back into retirement. Most wage offers these days are insulting even if  you do find something. I fell into this job purely by accident. It was once in a lifetime. That, I'm sure of.

 Like I said, if you're young, relocatable and hungry, Northrop-Grumman's a company worth checking out.

-very dysfunctional and slow processes
-a pattern of very poor team management if you have new hires leaving within a month and a half month 
-the worst onboarding process.
I had to wait a month from when I accepted the position to start which I have never seen in my life. and even after that month I still had to continue to fill out paperwork as recently as this week. It’s like pulling tooth and nails to gain simple access. NG is the archaic, slow and inefficient. You guys had me become your errand boy and waste time going back and back to offices to get and drop off birthday and etc cards, nowhere in my job description was that listed, I didn’t complain about th

It is dumbfounding that my first day was not simply taking my photo for my badge and then providing me all my needed accesses and laptop since they had me wait a month to start here. I did not have a laptop for almost two weeks, then after getting the loaner laptop being behind the eight ball as the rest of my coworkers were able to perform their job duties a lot better than myself as they had all of the necessary equipment and accesses needed to perform their job duties. I Finally received my permanent laptop on 10/4 which is almost a month from starting at NG. Then I did not receive the necessary SAP access until one day short of a month of starting at NG which is essential for the financial position which I had followed up around 7 times, again which shows that NG doesn’t employ the right people as nothing should take 7 follow ups to get it resolved. Who would have thought to give a “Financial Analyst” financial SAP Transactions necessary to do their job would be equivalent to the time it takes to build a house from scratch  Then to work remote you have to have a special badge which with how ridiculously slow your process is In my opinion i would not have  received until 2019 which is absolutely ludicrous. 

I completely understand why NG has such a large turnover it’s due to your very slow, redundant, and archaic processes that make current employees, new hires/contractors want to look elsewhere for opportunities rather than be part of that defective work environment. If anyone asks me if they should work at NG, I will without any reservation tell them to look elsewhere to save them from the misery of working at NG.

Don't work here. Absolute zero job safety.  Horrible,  almost 70 year old fossilized engineers are here to make sure you are next laid off. They will take your work, codes and documents,  remove your name and claim it as their design.  The fossils are nasty to others because we all know Alliant Techsystems in Clearwater will shut down in 2020, and all they want is to stay little bit longer. If you are younger than 50 at ATK, they will discriminate against you, fossils will be nice to you on surface, but they will talk garbage about you to your manager behind closed doors. They sees you as threat. If you disagree with the fossils,  you are laid off.

The management provides no support. They are useless corporate birocracy. They don't even know what project requirements are, they have no idea who talks to customers and promises what. The managers will preassure you to lie to customers,  and to the corporate. ATK  keeps 2,3 women and 2,3 blacks in the management, and their jobs are safe. For the rest, it is ole boys club. The management and the fossil engineers make good olé boys brotherhood. You are in or out of the club. Noonee is in between. they support each other in order to stay little bit longer at ATK before retirement.  Again,  they all know ATK will close office in Clearwater by 2020.

Don't hire managers from ATK.  They will ruin your business just like they ruined ATK  Clearwater. 

So many good, hard working people here were laid off in order to make room for lazy, big mouth, incompetent managers and almost 70 year old engineers that do not even complete assigned tasks.  But at ATK, they don't care about employees' contribution; they only care if you are part of the club. Performance reviews are pointless and waist of time, it is olé boys club that decides everything. 

Work here only if you need around two years before retirement, and if playing politics, backstabbing,  interrupting and yelling at colleagues is your cup of tea. ATK does not invest into employees, so you will learn pretty much nothing.  It will be a big problem if you apply for a job somewhere else.

Avoid Alliant techsystems now Orbital ATK Clearwater like a plague.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Principal software engineer 119 salaries reported	$134,421 per year
System engineer 101 salaries reported	$123,533 per year
Software engineer 115 salaries reported	$101,216 per year
Senior system engineer 7 salaries reported	$168,271 per year
Supply chain specialist 10 salaries reported	$95,030 per year

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