Old school engineering firm with public sector... cosiness.
Pros
Flexible hours. great people, interesting work if you can put yourself to the task. Colleagues have been great company and got to get some eyes into some interesting work around the office. Good training programs, OK remuneration, good working pace if you're familiar with public sector environments, except you're actually trusted to perform the work as technical experts (where warranted). Some very smart people around to work with though, so while there was a bit of "impostor syndrome", everyone's on the same boat when it comes to routine engineering work. Reasonably acceptable amenities.
Cons
Rigorous security implements makes for some discomfort be it leaving your phone or otherwise taking ages with software approvals (as is with any defence contractor). Lazy management structure so you're left to your own vices to proactively get any work done or progressing. COVID controls were rather extreme for an office setting to the point that staff morale had dropped. IT sysadmins lacking any real support due to operating on a shoestring (eg: if one person is away, no one is around to support specific systems - there goes productivity). Depending on work duties, sometimes you're handballed to deal with someone else's mess involving domains outside of your area of expertise, because previous SMEs have either moved on, resigned or are otherwise unavailable to support and they can't find anyone else to help. Software is treated like an afterthought - "anyone can do software" so getting unqualified non-software engineers to build safety-critical software is a regular occurrence... Fortunately it keeps us in a job to fix up their mistakes (even if dull).
