Read Before Flight

By Logan Grumbach

Read Before Flight offers an insider's view of the mechanics and culture of the Aerospace and Defense industry. Geared for early career engineers and scientists, it provides a holistic view of the industry and general advice on how to navigate academia and those crucial early career years.  

 

Dr. Logan Grumbach leverages his 10+ years of experience at small and large government contractors as well as experience as a government employee to provide answers and insights to some of the most frequently asked questions sought by early career engineers and scientists.

 

DR. LOGAN GRUMBACH works as an intelligence analyst at Ignite Fueling Innovation, Inc., supporting the Department of Defense. He is also an Adjunct Instructor at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Logan Grumbach
• Release date: Aug 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223464662

Book preview

Chapter 2: The College Experience

Make Friends

Teachers and Advisors

Changing Your Major

College Grade Point Average (GPA)

Internships and Co-ops

Research Opportunities

Choosing Electives

Chapter 3: Seeking Employment

Basic Qualifications vs Preferred Qualification

Interviews

Practice Makes Perfect

What to Expect in Interviews

Offers and Negotiations

Salary

Benefits

Total Compensation Review

Chapter 4: The Industry

The Cyclical Nature of the Industry

Opportunities within Industry

The Federal Government

SETA (Systems Engineering, Test, and Analysis Engineers)

Prime Contractors (Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, etc.)

Other Employment

Management vs. Individual Contributor

Chapter 5: General Advice and Insights into the Industry

Experience Multipliers and Differentiators

Continuing Education

Look at Job Requisitions

Promotions

Job Hopping

Transitioning to New Opportunities

The People

The Team and Managers Make the Opportunity

Choosing Mentors

Engineering is Not for the Timid

The Downturns

Chapter 6: Stories and Advice from My Career

It all Pays the Same

Skills for Your Job vs. Skills for Any Job

Always Treat People with Respect

Chapter 7: Closing Thoughts

Introduction

My name is Logan Grumbach, and I am writing this in hopes that it can be a benefit to engineers of the future. I do not write this because I consider myself to be a successful engineer. Quite the contrary, I started my engineering journey with the goal of owning my own engineering firm. Although I have come close to achieving this dream, it alludes me. Neither am I an executive at a major engineering firm, and rarely am I the smartest in the room. I write this because when I began my engineering journey, I started with no insight into the industry. Many of my friends and classmates had parents and grandparents who were engineers. They started college knowing how to code in various languages, or navigate computer aided design (CAD) software. They had contacts in the industry to help them find internships and full-time employment after graduation. These individuals always seemed to have quite the leg-up on people like myself who had no insight into the industry. My father is a pastor, and my mother is a trained teacher who decided to be a homemaker when I was born. Although both were incredibly intelligent and instilled an immense amount of knowledge in me (much of which I found incredibly useful throughout my career), they could provide no insight into the industry I would eventually enter. This document is an attempt at leveling the playing field for the next generation. I hope this will provide insight into academia and industry for students new to the industry like myself.

Despite not reaching all of my goals, I think am worth listening to. I have four degrees in engineering: a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering; a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering; a Master’s Degree in Aerospace Systems Engineering; and a Ph.D. in Aerospace Systems Engineering all from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. I have worked in several different fields throughout my career. However, I have spent the majority of my career in the defense industry, particularly missile defense. I have also served as a part-time lecturer at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Throughout my career, I have worked for the federal government and private industries. I have spent time at small companies as well as major corporations including the Boeing Company and Lockheed Martin. I have worked both as an individual contributor (engineer with no management duties) and an engineering manager. I have managed the finances for multimillion-dollar engineering projects. Typically, large engineering companies have six levels of engineers (more on this later) before progressing into executive positions. I am currently a level 5 engineering manager.

Although I have not met all of my personal goals, many in the industry would consider me accomplished in an engineering career, especially for my age. As of writing this document, I am 31 years old. I graduated with my bachelor’s degree roughly eight years ago. That is a lot to accomplish in eight years. I have averaged a 15% salary increase over my career. I make more money now than I thought I would make until the latter years of my career. My career path has not been straight-forward. It was not preplanned. I discovered two key methods for advancing through the industry – experience multipliers and experience differentiators. These will be discussed in depth in a later chapter.

It is important that you recognize everything in this document is based on my experiential view of the world. You probably will not agree with everything written here. Your parents will definitely not agree with everything written here. That’s ok.

Being based on my career, this book will be largely centered on the defense and aerospace industries. To avoid this book being wholly based on the defense industry, I will augment my career path and experiences with that of my wife, Christina. She is also an engineer working in the space industry. We have taken starkly different paths through our career, the details of which will be described throughout the book. She is just as successful as I am, and arguably more. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2015. She is a level four engineer at the age of 28. Despite my degrees, I only beat her to that mark by less than 1 year. Never confuse degrees with intelligence. Here is a little about the differences in our career paths:

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This book is not meant to be a roadmap to success. I would consider both my wife and I successful. We have traveled two completely different paths, a tale of two engineering careers, as it were. This book is intended to set you up for success on YOUR career path, wherever that may lead. My hope is the reader will find nuggets in each of our paths that they can use.

I wish that I could provide the reader such a roadmap to success, but the opportunities that I was able to take advantage of (and those I missed) are gone, and so my exact career path cannot be replicated. Instead, it is intended to help supply you with knowledge of the industry, lessons learned, and general advice so that you can recognize similar opportunities when they are presented to you. I will add the caveat here: This is not intended to define how you should navigate industry over time. Engineering changes; the industry changes; and social norms change. This book is intended to provide insight into the industry as it stands today. My hope is that the reader will take this data and contemplate it, compare it to his or her own experiences, and use the insights here as appropriate in his or her respective career.  I will also add that the insights in this book are not taken from any company I have worked for, but otherwise are general trends and insights I have found in the industry derived from all of my experiences.  This book contains no company specific data other than can be found through open source searches (such as job requisitions).  Much of the data in the book regarding experience, levels, and salaries are made up as representative data sets to show general trends I have observed.

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