Ask HN: How is working at Sandia National Labs?

[Durandal36]

I may have a job offer for the Albuquerque, NM location as a firmware/embedded software engineer in the near future. Was wonder if anyone here has worked there as a software or firmware engineer and what your experience was, and if you would recommend it.

[jleyank]

Is there any clearance or nationality issues, or are those times (long) gone? I thought it was a national (physics) lab and they would be sensitive about such things.

[quadruplebond]

Not all positions require a clearance, but most citizens eventually get one. Life as a foreign national can be difficult if you are at SNL. And if you are from a sensitive country it is even more difficult.

[quadruplebond]

It is going to depend on your org and some other stuff. How much do you want to work on the high side etc.

[quadruplebond]

Happy to answer specific questions if you have them.

[Durandal36]

Hi,

1. How's the work life balance in general? 2. Is there good job security in general? 3. How difficult is it to switch between groups as your career progress? For example if I was interested in the high performance computing work at Sandia in the future.

Thanks again for the response.

[quadruplebond]

send me an email at <my-user-name>@gmail.com if you want to chat more,

I am in a software role, focused on future architectures and HPC, WLB is good in our department.

Job security is really good IFF you are an FTE, if you are a postdoc or an LTE then meh.

Changing departments requires some work, but at least on the open science side it's easy to switch projects. You keep the same manager, but just work on different stuff. If you are in a super specific mission area it might be harder to change work.

If you are interested in HPC at Sandia just email me and lets chat more, HPC is where I currently sit and know the most people.