stay away (again) - Digital Service Expert Defense Digital Service Employee Review

Very talented team of unique characters with diverse backgrounds. You have near-complete autonomy to get what you want out of this position. You often have the freedom to choose projects that interest you. Your work often has direct impact on the warfighters' lives. If you push yourself and can chart your own path you will find this job to be very productive and rewarding. You are encouraged to present at conferences and participate on panels and grow your skills. You are in a good position here to help influence change across the DoD through policy and advocating for best-practices.

Depending on the partner organizations and external stakeholders involved there can be a lot of bureaucracy to navigate. If you aren't good at raising concerns early or don't have solid people skills you can get buried. There has been a lot of bureaucratic churn over the past few years with a number of leadership changes but current leadership is very capable, a strong advocate for the team, and will have your back. The workload is very streaky – feast or famine. You need to be able to find things to do without someone telling you. Not all have this ability and will lurk in the shadows from time to time.

- Researching, planning, designing important software UX supporting our troops, government, and working in agile, nimble way with the amazing (PM/Eng/Design) experts around you. - Fully remote - with travel as needed and required. - Once in a lifetime experience for senior product designers to make a difference and learn about working at the DoD and in Gov. - This isn't your typical tech job - it's really exceptional. Expect the unexpected. - Flat org; the director you're hired under is important (I was lucky and had a couple of great ones!). Everyone on team is treated at same senior level.

- Projects can sometimes stall or lag due to authorizations and approvals and reviews or customers and outside partners schedules. - The larger CDAO org DDS has become a part of is sometimes helpful - sometimes not; priorities are changing within CDAO; not sure DDS has seen lots of benefits yet. - Newer tools - if not on the approved list - can be harder to get but mostly DDS has a solid, modern tech stack already.