software engineer

system engineer

engineer

senior software engineer

systems test engineer

United Launch Alliance (ULA)

After my first job out of school at SpaceX, I was deciding between a promotion position with offers at Relativity, Blue and ULA. I ultimately chose to move to Denver. In my two years since I started here I have felt like part of a family. The culture, the team, the leaders I have worked with have all embodied that. I enjoy the work and have a lot of fun interacting with my team. We joke, we solve tough problems, we mentor and help each other out, and sometimes we shoot nerf guns at each other when we disagree (or when we need to get someone's attention). You're not forced to work long hours, if you want to clock 40 a week and leave you can, if you work longer and get more done the managers recognize and reward that effort (I did the latter and was promoted early). Overtime is also payed to employees when it's needed to help a critical path item which is really nice. Managers are very flexible, I mix and match my hours in the day, go for a bike ride in the middle of the day, etc. as long as you are online to support any meetings/discussions you need to and hit your hours/get your work done. There are some crazy smart people here too, the types of people that just make your jaw drop when you go into their office and they start flying through diff-eq's on the whiteboard and you just sort of nod along like "yea that makes sense" as you immediately go back through your old textbooks afterwards. The types of presences that inspire. People that worked on the Space shuttles, stories from people whose colleagues worked in the Apollo era, history from the Atlas and Delta development and challenges along the way. There are so many lessons learned to soak in from the people here that help make you a great engineer and make sound technical decisions of your own. I feel like I may be one of the few younger people to share this view, but ULA is a company I want to go through to the endgame with. I want to learn and climb and hopefully one day lead not just through charisma and good business sense, but with a sound technical foundation as Tory does today. It's a small company and probably a bit harder to get into but I would recommend ULA highly to anyone looking to work in the launch vehicle business.

To be fair, there were a lot of good times when you were allowed to work and stay in your "flow state".  Especially if you were producing results.  Which "results" could be ANYTHING.   Literally you reporting a finding, you learning something new from another co-worker and want to put it into practice.  

Hardest part about most jobs and this one was to avoid the gossip.   Also trying to complete projects or "asks" be on time to present the results on team meetings or morning meetings.

What was common was when you were offering to support and then get asked to support either the West coast or East coast launch operations and you get no support.  If your computer fails and your what they call "TDY" meaning working remote at one of the launch sites on either coast, your on your own.  You get a 1-800 to call, yet you need your laptop to function. Problem is there is no one around, there is no IT Dept. in California.   In Florida there is actually a staff and they are all trying to outshine the next, which can be good I suppose if your the customer lol.
When you come up with an idea or solution you have to understand that you explaining it to someone else may constitute they reiterate it to your immediate supervisor.  The treatment to contractors is not equal to those who are internal ULA employees. If your skilled in AutoCAD then be the best.

The most enjoyable parts are the people honestly.  I think this is true with most places.  When I learned something new that was  very invigorating in some educational way.

A company with a fantastic and mission that reaches world-wide by putting the nation's most critical intelligence, military, NASA, data gathering, meteorological, (potentially), human launch, and sensitive payloads into space.  The pay is better than average with solid benefits, including every other Friday off (9/80 schedule).  However, like every Aerospace company, it is filled with a disproportionate number of employees at the tail-end of their careers who still work and run the company like the antiquated hierarchical style of the 1970s and 1980s.  One would think that with the "graying" work force this is an opportunity and management likes to act as if it is, but don't be fooled: it you are not a heritage company employee (Lockheed or Boeing) and have twenty years in the business, you will not be promoted beyond middle management, if at all.  The firm is a monopoly in the launch services, which is soon ending; however, current management has very little perspective how to run a firm in a competitive environment.  The firm is transitioning toward competition, but most managers are only years from retirement and have little incentive to make that transition happen, or to take advice from those (i.e. people like me) who are both experienced in actual competitive marketplaces and educated (MBA/Organization Management) in the principles and techniques needed to run a company in a competitive environment.  You will work hard, but you will face -  year after year - the stress of reduction in forces (RIFs) and the challenge of working with, through, and around a highly political organization and layers of government oversight.

As an electrical engineer with experience in a few different functions, a typical day will have a variety of personal work and meetings, whether that's internal or with customers or suppliers. Typically, there is more work than there are people to do the work, but managers and co-workers are understanding. The hardest part of the job is managing this amount of work. The most enjoyable is getting to see the fruit of your work when a rocket launches. Management is definitely really good, knowledgeable, and down-to-earth.

As a company with a lot of oversight, both internally and from customers, it can take a lot of time and "paperwork" to get things done. This is largely the nature of the work rather than something particular to ULA. There are a lot of good opportunities to work with suppliers and understand electrical components and systems, but with these opportunities comes the need for a lot of administrative details and formal decision making.

My work situation is somewhat stressful, especially given that a number of people have been leaving the company (both from attrition and layoffs). This leads to one qualm - it does seem that ULA can be impersonal when letting go of employees from a corporate perspective, though I will say that employees from within my group have been helpful with folks who are let go.

I would recommend the company to anyone with an electrical, mechanical, or aerospace engineering background.

Fun work, fun people, but HR really hurts this company. Attrition rates are incredibly high because of this. No complaints about management in the direct chain of command, but they are powerless in terms of advancing employee careers due to HR blocks in the system. It's a shame such politics exist at ULA.

There are two cases where I would recommend ULA:

1. For a new college grad, use ULA as a stepping stone: work at ULA for 1-3 years, then give yourself a promotion by going to another company. This is what most (smart) new grads do. It can take up to 5 years to get your FIRST promotion at ULA...

2. For folks who want to coast and don't see the need for further career advancement, this might be the place for you. Don't expect any raises or promotions, so be sure you get that salary you are comfortable sustaining. 

Benefits are fairly competitive with other companies in the industry, except no more pensions are offered, which is makes it much easier for folks to jump ship due to lack of incentives to stay.

ULA is not pay for performance, so if you are an ambitious employee with aspirations of advancing your career, this place is not for you. If, however, you are content with where you are at now and are okay with staying there for the remainder of your career, I can see this being a nice place to end a career.

IT is typically the last investment and makes it difficult to have an efficient work force.  We are typically behind the curve but the adoption of Model Based Enterprise has been a true inspiration that the company is investing in a long term future.  I would recommend the company to early career professionals however middle and upper management act like ULA is a big company because we are co-owned by two Aerospace giants and most leaders came from those organizations.   ULA is smaller in employee count than SpaceX but acts like old space.  The attrition of the 10 - 20 year employees is astoundingly high.  The retention of 20 + employees that do not perform at as high of a pace but who have leaders that know them to keep them safe or if laid off, bring them back as contractors is simply disgusting.

Employees are heart of the company, while managers just fight for turf. Reorgs just to keep management busy, manager shuffles, no employee impacts. Leveling up takes 3-4 years on average. Managers with no industry experience, while promotions within are more based on favoritism then experience. Layoffs every 3-4 years. Very little cross department interaction. Savings efforts stifle innovation. Improvements end up just lip servise promises. Race to bottom on cost paralysed the company. Stretched to thin across too many projects with competing priorities. Remote work has negative connotations. Trying hard to check boxes of activities with little sincerity. Unpaid overtime for Salaried roles, while OT is demanded. Just the industry name keeps it in high regard, while moral is crumbling from within. Little brand recognition. 

This review is limited to the Centaur V engineering group. Training is poor, management pressure is high, team morale is low, and support is minimal. Certain team member veterans make the job difficult to succeed. Because they are technical SMEs their attitude is difficult to work with or get support in adjusting. Their communication for shift hand off is poor and then use that poor communication to paint their team members as incompetent to leadership despite requests for communication. 

Production planning overrides engineering judgements every time. The entire line is constantly behind schedule because of those production calls override better engineering judgements. Work almost always comes home. Turn over rate for this team is extremely hight. Most last just over a year and then leave. Management hires mostly straight from college grads leaving very little if any long term knowledge

Management treats engineers as a cheap commodity and there are no raises or opportunity to advance, and mass demotions were introduced to cut costs.   Even so, they will pay well if you are a new college grad, but getting a job here will require successfully ducking a myriad of administrative hurdles placed in your way by the worst HR dept in the business.  This company has more management and levels of management than anywhere in the aerospace industry (compared to Grumman, Boeing, Rockwell, Hamilton Sundstrand, and Raytheon).  The business they are in was a government funded monopoly without any incentive to cut management heads.  Lately, SpaceX has been eating them for lunch, and the CEO was fired and replaced by a human being.  However, 99% of the bad management remains and I hope this change was not too late to save ULA as some of the people left there are great to work with.  This is a place to look at only if you are young and desperate

As a launch ops engineer you get to do some of the coolest most unique stuff but management seems desperate on braking your back with the amount of work due to under staffing. 

Coworkers are great people but it's a mostly white-male dominated work environment.

One of the really good things is the amount of diverse experience you can get. They are okay with you trying new things but don't think you'll get in as a Launch Ops person and finesse your way into one of the coveted "design" engineering roles in Denver. You might get disappointed.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Software engineer 8 salaries reported	$120,032 per year
System engineer 9 salaries reported	$144,245 per year
Engineer 6 salaries reported	$132,746 per year
Senior software engineer 14 salaries reported	$133,784 per year
Systems test engineer 3 salaries reported	$125,594 per year

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