

Ask HN: High-paying jobs in the defense contracting industry - nyckel

In a recent thread about programming for a defense contractor in Iraq, the following quote got my attention: "If you can get a secret (basically, us citizen and not a felon), and have decent tech skills, you should be at $200-350k."<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1099805<p>I would consider relocating to a remote country to make a salary like this for a few years.<p>So, how does a skilled hacker with top credentials find and land these jobs? From the salaries posted on Glassdoor.com, it seems a lot of programmers working at defense contractors, especially those working domestically, are not making more than engineers in other industries.<p>I'm also interested in hearing about the recruiting process and any comparisons to working at the big-name US tech companies.
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inetsee
One fundamental problem with this idea is that if you don't already have a
clearance it's very difficult to get a clearance. Getting a Top Secret or
Special Access clearance can take 6 to 12 months, and costs the company a
great deal of money. You could already have a job with a defense contractor,
be a highly valued employee, they could desperately need someone with a
clearance, and they will go outside to company to hire someone who already has
a clearance rather than go through the process of getting you a clearance.

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percept
You might try:

<http://www.clearancejobs.com/> [Advanced Search for countries]

