Pros
I worked at Aptima for about 3 years and it laid out the foundations for my career and directed me towards what I wanted to pursue for the rest of my life. To anyone applying, it's a bit difficult to explain what Aptima does; but their bread and butter has been researching and developing tech that augments the way humans work. They do this in a variety of different sectors, particularly in defense and healthcare. -First and foremost, I want to applaud what makes this company truly great: The People! Defense is a stale old industry that has been an old boys club for way too long, particularly lacking in diversity for race and gender. Aptima bucks this trend: You have a great mix of people, from various cultural backgrounds, various educational backgrounds, and has many women in leadership and executive functions. Along with that, many of these individuals are extremely knowledgeable in their fields, who are always willing to help you on things or teach you new things. Combined, this makes it a great place to work. -The projects are extremely interesting and forward thinking, and you get many opportunities to bolster your skill-sets in cutting edge fields like Software Engineering, Data Science and Applied Psychology. This is truly a gem: the way this company works, and the way projects are done, you get a lot of time to learn things on the job; an opportunity that is extremely rare in the rest of industry. -Depending on your role, the work-life balance here is great. This is a company that truly cares about you and your well-being, and offers some great policies to bolster this such as working from home/remotely. -Lots of cross-functional work opportunity: since the company's rather small, you aren't just confined into the business org you were hired in, you're able to work with people in different units and pursue different work. -There's a lot of upward mobility depending on your role and what type of contributor you choose to become. You have the freedom to pretty much carve your own path (e.g. if you come into the company as an individual/techncial contributor, you have the flexibility to pursue project management opportunities and get tied into more strategic initiatives).
Cons
-Aptima's primary bread-and-butter is working within defense; work that is usually contractual. Because of this, there can be ebbs and flows of how much and what type of work you do. This can lead to a lack of consistency on the amount of work you do on a day-to-day basis. -At many times, if you're skilled at something that the company is lacking, you may be boxed at doing just that. This can be hindering, especially if you're someone looking to get out of an individual contributor role and tackle more strategic initiatives. -Due to the research and development nature of much of the work done here, the work you do may or may not get any practical use. If you're in a technical capacity, this can be pretty demoralizing after putting in months of work to no avail. -Though there is upward mobility, attaining it could require a bit of politicking and shoulder rubbing. This is especially difficult if you're boxed into a role that requires you to do a lot of technical work. -Sometimes it felt like there was an imbalance between project managers and technical contributors.