Pros
There is a lot of work across multiple programmes and sectors which means there is opportunity to get involved in things you may not have been involved in before. As a mid level manager technical manager, you are given a degree of flexibility to initiative and drive local changes and feed into wider organisational change programmes. MBDA is people focused which has good systems in place to help those who are interested in developing and progressing their career. Within my role, there are good networking both internally and externally to the company in particular with MBDA's customer / technical stakeholder community. Dynamic (flexible / hybrid working) working is a really good element of MBDA's offering. Whilst it doesnt change the terms of the contract it enables you to discuss working arrangements on a rolling basis with your direct line manager. Having you children, it has been brilliant as I can work a little extra on some days and work shorter on others to help juggle the demands of family life.
Cons
Like a majority of big organisations, especially in the defence sector, there are inefficiencies and processes that feel restrictive in particular when first joining the company. Across different sectors and programmes there are slightly different ways of working with a multitude of different tool sets, whilst all are governed by the same operating procedures the variations can make it difficult to drive consistency into the way teams operate when supporting multiple work packages on different products.