What the hell kind of job is this?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I got this message from Monster.com with a job notification the other day. I’m happy with the job I’m in now and not looking, but I’m too lazy to turn off Monster notifications. Anyhow, part of the job description looks so vague that it could be anything, but the second part asks for a lot of qualifications for such a vague job description.

[QUOTE=Monster.com]
SRA International has supported the Intelligence Community (IC) for over 15 years. Throughout this time SRA has repeatedly delivered mission focused solutions, which not only meet, but often exceed, our customer’s needs. SRA’s employees are often recognized by our customer for the great work that they do. This program presents challenging, highly sensitive, and rewarding work, which is vital to the safety and interests of the United States of America.

This contract provides SETA support to a direct mission-support organization. We are deeply involved in new initiatives and critical functions that enable the operations of this customer.

In the first 6-9 months, you will:

Assist in interpreting and defining customers' needs and help facilitate a common and agreed upon understanding of the requirements
Organize face-to-face meetings for collecting and refining requirements, document the results and findings at said meetings, and track action items to closure from the meetings
Developing briefings and other outreach efforts with senior management.
Review, edit and improve documentation and presentations to customers to include requirements, capabilities and project statuses and updates
Review, edit and coordinate project management artifacts, briefings, and provide existing operational guidance for requests from customers.
Assist the customer with strategic planning at various levels in the organization.

Big Objective: Assist the customer with the development, analysis and refinement of strategy, outreach and future project definitions.

Why would a top person want this job? This customer space provides mission-essential services to operational components. It is an exciting and growing group with plenty of work and room for professional growth. You will work alongside experts in the industry and within a center of excellence.

Requirements:

6-9 years of experience in systems engineering
Bachelor's degree
Experience working with the IC customer (particularly with S&T programs)
Experience with the engineering lifecycle, experience managing project management artifacts, project plans, schedules, requirements, etc,
Familiarity with the IC customer's PMF (Project Management Framework)
Experience preparing and delivering briefings to senior management, experience developing outreach and experience developing program strategies
Familiarity with and understanding of the IC customer mission
TS/SCI security clearance with customer specific Polygraph
1-2 years of experience with biometric collection systems is preferred

[/QUOTE]
Lots of weasel phrases in there that sound important, but arent. What is it?

2

It is one of those systems analyst/project management jobs that happens to require a security clearance so they don’t tell you much about the actual project upfront. It looks like it involves developing and rolling out a biometric data collection system. My job description sounds pretty similar to that except for the security clearance part. Most of the jobs in systems work sound like that as a matter of fact and they don’t make sense to regular people but they are real jobs even if they are a little hard to define even when you have one.

3

Interesting. And here I thought it was one of those “we’ll tell you all about the job at the interview” scams.

4

Those don’t generally have such specific requirements attached to them.

5

They want a Requirements Manager for a classified biometric collection system project that is just starting/just about to start.

All of that language is pretty standard for the DC defense contractor scene. The only thing not spelled out is who the customer is (“IC” covers a lot of agencies), but it sounds like the most important thing is that the applicant have IC experience.

6

Did you even Google the company name? SRA International appears to be some sort of contracting firm for government agencies. Probably similar to companies like CSC, Halliburton or Kroll.

It sounds like some sort of business analyst/project manager position.

7

I have nothing to add other than the fact that, as a former employee of SRA International, everything everyone else has responded is correct - they are a defense contractor that work on numerous classified contracts, hence their need to be specific in requirements and vague on details. It’s also fairly standard wording for any defense related contractor positions.

For what it’s worth, they were a good company to work for, but defense contracting being defense contracting, when the contract is up, those involved should be prepared to hop to whatever company picks it up.