Great place to work - Contract Specialist National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration Employee Review

Super kind and welcoming environment, people love their jobs here. Mission oriented organization providing critical services to US citizens. Pay is fair and your time is respected here.

Health insurance was not included.

Great travel experience and opportunity. Outstanding Survey Tech community!! Genuine good coworkers aboard the ships for the most part. Be the forefront of environmental data gathering for the public. After some time working as a wage mariner, you can gather a lot of time off (shore leave) to use, take a month, sometimes more off for example. Most platforms now are switching to a 2 month on - 1 month off rotation style. Most of the higher pay is gathered out to sea as overtime. There are no days off when out to sea on mission (typically 2 - 4 weeks), however all that weekend worktime is overtime.

The pay is less than the public sector. Swings of the Federal Government, once a stable workplace, has now become an unpredictable and insidious place of employment. The NOAA Corps Officers (management) onboard the research ships change every 2 or so years and can be good or can be really bad, roll of the dice on who you get. After some time working there, as a wage mariner, I have found that the management is good at pretending to, or tries to care about you, but the reality is they fall short, and don't really care about you or your career in the long term, they move on and you don't.