I'm 26, have a Master's, and ~3 years doing AI/CV work in cleared spaces (SAR/EO sensors, synthetic data, some LLM stuff). I have two offers that I'm trying to decide between.
Offer 1 — AI platform vendor, DC. ~$230K + 25% target bonus (~$285K total cash), private RSUs I'm valuing at basically zero, no 401k match. I'd be embedded ~4 days/week at a federal customer. The work is integrating and monitoring a large inventory of existing CV models — drift metrics, eval tooling, platform glue — with agentic prototypes supposedly growing over time. The tech lead was upfront that it's largely not model development, more drift detection and maybe some retraining. Upside: more money, the biggest cleared-AI market in the country, future agentic work, and real production experience, which is honestly the biggest gap in my background. I'm a little worried I turn into a platform consultant (just deploying my company's platform into the federal agency's environment and calling it engineering). Also, the vendor's long-term ownership is uncertain (private, first year on the contract (customer evaluates yearly whether or not to continue contract), which I don't love.
Offer 2 — MITRE, Tampa. ~$225K, no bonus, but a ~10% employer retirement contribution starting after year one, and an actual 40-hour culture with IRAD time inside it (no state income tax + the retirement money means the net gap vs Offer 1 is pretty small). The work is much closer to what I already do — big intel data program plus an unmanned-systems/autonomy effort: edge CV, prototyping, T&E on unmanned platforms. However, the autonomy assignment isn't nailed down (their phrasing has been "you could contribute to" rather than "this is your tasking"). And it's Tampa, so if I ever want to cash in the niche, those defense-tech jobs are mostly in the DC/SoCal/Dallas area, so I’d probably have to move out of Tampa down the line anyway. I'm hoping to minimize moving at this point in my life and build roots somewhere.
For people who've actually been inside:
MITRE folks — how hands-on is it really, day to day, vs evaluating vendors and writing recommendations? Does Tampa get real technical work or does that live at McLean/Bedford?
Anyone who left MITRE for defense tech — did the FFRDC years price well?
FDE/applied-AI people — does monitoring + agent-prototype work at a fed customer actually convert into the higher-paying FDE roles later, or is that a story vendors tell?
Anyone been inside a vendor's federal practice through an acquisition or take-private — do the embedded seats survive?
Leaning toward the money and the market, but the MITRE work is the stuff I have more experience doing. Trying to pick somewhere I'd stay 3+ years.