I worked for an engineering firm, Qinetiq, based in Waltham. As a company our main sources of income, from my perspective (I only worked there six months as a low level software engineer), were government (Department of Defense) contracts.
While QinetiQ was known for its DoD contracts, it was made known that the company was attempting increase its commercial interests. While in Waltham, I mainly worked on a commercial product, namely PowerLine Systems.
A listing of products can serve to illuminate the “problems” we dealt with. We had several products that dealt with the protection of military forces, e.g., a system that provided soldiers with the vector of incoming fire, armor systems for planes and other vehicles (I saw pictures of Humvees), and robots used to defuse, or otherwise render non-dangerous, bombs. Our commercial products included the aforementioned PowerLine Systems, which took measurements of power lines (voltage, current, power factor, etc.), a system for measuring the structural integrity of train tracks, and a system that measured weather data.
My coworkers were mainly other engineers, mostly software (I am a computer engineer which is basically the same). I did interact with some mechanical and electrical but only on a casual basis. A few specific coworkers come to mind with regards to integration between disciplines, the people who wrote testing procedures. These people were not engineers but had to write extremely detailed testing procedures which are, of course, important. Interaction with these people was interesting as we had to explain how to ensure our products were of the highest standards to people that did not have our intricate technical training.
I do not, at this juncture of my life, have much of an interest in work like what I did at QinetiQ. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy what I did, I did immensely and I learned a great deal, but that I want to pursue another activity more, becoming a lawyer.
