Pros
Excellent opportunities to take a range of differing roles including on-site customer facing secondments Limited but great travel with quite generous expenses STEM engagement is strongly funded and spread well across the local area Top-tier prestige Flexible working and short weeks Very deep technical integration work in the military domain which can feel bleeding edge Pension scheme is exceptionally generous
Cons
Very in-group/out-group. You will know if you're with the in-crowd who get promotions/higher pay rises or if you're ignored. You can heroically push yourself to extremes in terms of high-skill work and number of hours working and still it's never enough to please middle management. Promotion for out-group people is literally down to years of service alone. There's a strong sense of hiding negatives or problems in favour of continuously presenting highly positive reports, even when there are crumbling foundations on certain projects. Pay is surprisingly low compared to rivals, no yearly bonuses and non-trivial pay rises are like getting blood from a stone