police officer

criminal investigator

special agent

protection officer

information technology specialist

United States Secret Service

Everyday is challenging, different and rewarding.  Accurate, effective and efficient planning in your personal growth with the ability to make sound executive command decisions are the mainstay to professional development.  Through field operations experience combined with administrative work experience, your accomplishments are centered around your negotiation, coordination, mentoring and management abilities to make accurate decisions on short notice with sometimes limited resource assets and intelligence.  The ability to manage these criterion within reasonable time restraints is a key to successful operations within emergency preparedness.  Taking assertive roles to learn your overall command structure, asset strength, weaknesses and the ability skill level of your teams performance level are all critical requirements of excellent executive managers. Taking action roles to develop close bonds and professional relationships within your personnel, working as a team-player and directing oversight control through reliable supervisors that effectively evaluate those team-members with higher levels of command abilities as future leaders is a continuing requirement to all successful commanders. Achievement in security planning and coordination of protective environments will accomplish your protective mission, to which the combination of the aforementioned is accomplished with the right attitude.

Before I applied for a position as a Special Agent with the US Secret Service (USSS) in 2009, my Aunt who is a former USSS Special Agent, told me to "be careful" what "I wished for." No truer words were ever spoken.  


In hindsight, joining the Secret Service was the single worst decision I ever made in my life. I sacrificed everything for this agency and was willing to sacrifice my life for this country only to have my TS clearance stripped after six years on the job over an issue that was disclosed and that the Agency was aware of when I was initially hired in 2009.

Your TS clearance is tied to your livelihood with this occupation. If you lose it, and you can lose it over ANYTHING, they will place you on indefinite suspension without pay. This is the method they use to force people out of their jobs; even tenured employees as I was.

Retaliation is real in the USSS. You can forget about reporting it to DHS OIG, because that agency doesn't enforce PPD-19.

The USSS operates as a "classically" structured bureaucratic agency. This in and of itself isn't necessarily bad, but it also isn't necessarily compatible with 21st century life. The organizational culture within the USSS is exceptionally weak because most of the Special Agents working for it got their career start with other law enforcement entities.

I advise any and everyone considering this agency to be extremely cautious about proceeding with any employment opportunities with this agency. For the 24 individuals that will take their seat in the next SATC orientation at Rowley - consider yourself warned.

Supported prime contractor with project management support (PMS) transformation activities for the United States Secret Service (USSS) IT modernization task order. Responsibilities included providing application transformation activities and oversight for modernizing legacy applications, enterprise monitoring applications and technologies into a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) capability leveraging SOA service catalogue capabilities.  Other responsibilities included activities planning for the transformation of people, process, technologies and databases from a legacy IBM mainframe environment to client service environment based on SOA service principals and architecture. 

Utilized MS Office and System Architect tools to manage and developed IT service transition and integration strategies that outlined scheduled modernization activities from the “AS-IS” to the “TO-BE” environments that minimized operational risk, optimized services, and limited impact to the end-user communities. Analyzed existing IT environmental components to support delivery of new and emerging technologies to the USSS IT enterprise, conducted assessments and analysis of legacy applications, systems and databases for transition into TO-BE environment that supported technical optimization and modernization of new services and capabilities.

While employed with USSS/UD a typical day during my last ten years were long days; although my work hours were almost 12 hours a day all week. I thought that management was very flexible considering there were always financial issues that impacted manpower and the mantra was make it work. Management had key people in sensitive and mission critical positions that were positioned  to see the job was done. Many of my co-workers, self motivated and proud of their jobs. In most cases I would say my co-workers conscientious.There were a couple of things that were difficult at times were 1, Emergency travel, getting packed & out to the airports trains within six hours, along with long hours and 2, Maintaining professionalism(a requirement) and not being star struck. I enjoyed my job, doing advances for Presidential and Dignitary trips/visits all over the country, working access control for White House Divisions, working as a quasi building manager and bringing White House personnel together to maintain operational readiness and solving problems.

Great place to work if all you care about is making a ton of money doing nothing for long hours. Average work week is six days, 8-12 hours a day. Most people do an average of 20-40 hours of OT per week, depending on how many people are on leave or traveling for the job at any given time.

Good for a single person starting out, or if you don't care about seeing your family ever. Will work long hours, most holidays. Again, if all you care about is money, you will make a lot of it. Most people double or triple their base on OT alone. 

Some people come here and find an amazing career, others never get out of the rut. It all depends on what you're looking for and what you're willing to settle for. Opportunities for advancement are there, but slim picking and it all depends on who's making the picks. You could get picked up right away and end up in a good fulfilling spot, or you could try and try and never find yourself anywhere. It depends on the person, really.

Soon as you want to start a family, or even just see people outside of work every once in a while, this job loses its appeal.

I really enjoyed being able to work at my own pace.  I was thoroughly trained and well informed of the expectations and my responsibilities. 
I felt management was well-balanced and lead the office well without micromanaging. The hardest part of the job was learning all policies and procedures for each case, which were all unique in their own way.  It was vital to absorb and be able to recall such information to be able to perform duties properly.  Accuracy was of the utmost importance and was expected in every aspect of the job.  
While the job was often difficult and required much attention to detail, I really enjoyed my role with Secret Service.  It was challenging and required me to push myself to be better.

The US Secret Service is a law enforcement agency that has dual mission of protecting elected officials (President, Vice President) and Foreign Heads of State.  The Agency has the mission of protecting the financial infrastructure as well through its investigative responsibilities.  The work is demanding, challenging and gratifying.  Although a career within the Secret Service is not for everyone ... it is for individuals that seek a higher purpose.  The work is in support of the protection of the "leader of the free world".  There are long hours and travel associated with certain assignment within the Agency.  The Agency has a "no fail" mission so it requires a high level of dedication and professionalism.

Probably the second best job I ever had. I wouldn't have left, but for personal reasons unrelated to the job itself.

As an agent, you investigate criminal cases and do protection work. The protection took me to many foreign countries, I was behind the scenes with foreign dignitaries, celebrities, diplomats, and lobbyists. It was really interesting work.

The downsides are that you could be ordered to travel on very short notice (maybe 12 hours sometimes), and you could be gone for extended periods of time. My longest trip away was just over three weeks. That's tough if you have a family.

Pretty good pay for the job and the perks. Unless you totally eff up, you'll never get fired either, so lots of job security.

A typical day it's never like the day before where the unexpected it's just around the corner. Being in the middle of the national and international scene on a daily basis taught me how perspectives differ within our society, traveling all over the world and the entire continental U S A, showed me the importance of my job. 
It felt like a family with my co-workers and the sense of support and trust was always present but the hardest part was being away from our families when assigned to overseas or domestic details for long periods of time.
Being able to meet many leaders of the free world and getting the opportunity to travel the world was the most enjoyable part of this job.

I have mostly enjoyed my time with the secret service while I was stationed in the Orlando Field Office.  While there, I worked primarily financial criminal case work and it was pretty rewarding to see the cases from beginning to end.  I had to perform protective duties from time to time which was ok because it often broke up the mundane days of report writing.

When I transitioned to full time protection, I felt like I was not as important as when I conducted cases because former presidents and former first ladies who are of the older breed don't really present a hazard for outside threats.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Police officer 16 salaries reported	$99,804 per year
Criminal investigator 7 salaries reported	$75,066 per year
Special agent 5 salaries reported	$82,051 per year
Protection officer 5 salaries reported	$54,349 per year
Information technology specialist 5 salaries reported	$91,430 per year

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