Pros
My manager was great, so I had a lot of autonomy and choice on projects to work on. The best parts of working there were travel to interesting project locations and good friends I made (fellow associates/senior associates). For students fresh out of PhD programs, you get exposure to a variety of projects and project management. As an overview, consultants on the "engineer" track are in the traditional fields that get a Professional Engineer (PE) license. Their promotion track is typically Associate, Senior Associate/Engineer, Managing Engineer, Senior Managing Engineer, Principal Engineer Consultants on the "scientist" track are in scientific fields that don't get PE licenses. Their promotion track is Scientist, Senior Scientist, Manager, Senior Manager, Principal Scientists and Associates are the same "level" consultants, so I'll refer to them as associates. Performance is measured by "Utilization" or % time billed (Ideally over 70% in a year).
Cons
You're incentivized to work long hours as an associate/senior associate. It's pro/con - you're compensated for it, but need to define your own boundaries of work-life balance. When I worked there, Exponent offered overtime to associates/senior associates who bill over 85% of the week (e.g. 34 hours in a 40 hour week). For example, if you billed 40 hours to a client project and your hourly rate was $60/hour (Your Salary/2080 hours per year), you were paid an extra $60/hour*6 hours = $360 minus tax. Total compensation was Base Salary + Overtime + Bonus. Overtime was paid biweekly, bonus was minimal and paid ~March/April based on performance reviews. My bonus was ~$2000 the 1st year, and ~$5000 the 2nd year I worked there. I worked 15-25k of overtime each year, so that was the "biweekly bonus". Remember that Exponent is a consulting firm, so they're in the business of selling time (through expertise) to clients. The work-life balance is pretty unsustainable after 2-3 years if you 1) Have a hard time saying "no", 2) Want a family and have a partner who also has a full-time job with minimal flexibility or 3) Prefer to be an individual contributor (IC) and not a people/project manager. Observations and lessons learned: 1) As an associate/senior associate, you're in a catch-22 if you want work-life balance. In your first 6-12 months, you want to say "yes" to all project requests to meet more fellow consultants & build your internal network, but these might include last-minute client requests, and potentially fall on nights/weekends depending on client deadlines and turnaround time needed. Project timelines and client requests can change anytime. There can also be lulls in project work (e.g. when Covid shutdowns first begin). Communication is key: Do not miss important life moments for work (e.g. friend's weddings). Put it on the calendar, communicate it to your manager well in advance (when you know, and 2-4 weeks before the event as a reminder) and prioritize these. I know fellow associates who missed weddings or holidays for last-minute requests: It is never worth it. Prioritize life before work. 2) I don't know a single consultant who didn't work the occasional (or frequent) night or weekend because of a client request. There is a reason clients pay a premium for Exponent to get work done - but it's often at the cost of consultant's "personal" time. For anybody with a family or kids/pets, this means your partner or someone else needs to pick up more roles and responsibilities at home. 3) There isn't a true IC track: As consultants get promoted, their bill rates increase, so they need to shift the amount of time they're focusing on pure "billable hours" to more "business development" to land more projects. They then need to manage the bill rates of consultants (associates/senior associates) staffed on the project to complete the work within budget. If you're interested in purely doing IC work with minimal project/budget management, consulting at the manager level & up is probably not a good fit. On the other hand, if you already have a strong expertise and want to structure project strategy without always executing the detailed work, you could consider it.