Tell us about your path to Northrop Grumman. How did you get hired here?
I was able to attend the National Society of Black Engineer (NSBE) Conference in 2019, during my junior year of college. At the time, I was Miss Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE) for North Carolina Agriculture and Technical State University UPE’s chapter and the UPE president recommended I talk to several companies while I would attend NSBE. I visited the Northrop Grumman booth, and after giving my elevator pitch, a recruiter asked about my current job status. I told him I had an internship lined up already, but I was still open to making long-term connections to get my foot in the door for a full-time position. The recruiter liked that response and offered me an interview on the spot and long story short, I received an offer. I found it amusing, because one year prior to this, I attended a conference in California and I said to myself, “self, you are moving to California.” Ironically, the offer from Northrop Grumman was for a position located in California. Manifestation!
What do you work on at Northrop Grumman?
In the time that I have been at Northrop Grumman, I have worked in a software quality assurance (SQA) role and a software development role. I started as a SQA engineer supporting testing efforts for Triton. The SQA role was exciting because it was cross-functional so I also supported testing for Global Hawk. In a nutshell, I witnessed tests to ensure that tasks were executed in accordance with test procedures. I also recorded test results and worked to confirm that the tests were completed.
Right now, I am a member of a Global Hawk software engineering team. My assignments consist of creating different testing procedures such as inspection tests, analysis tests, demonstration tests, and more. I also work inside of the System Integration Lab from time to time to perform and complete testing that require lab support.
Can you share a defining moment that you’ve had at Northrop Grumman?
As a SQA engineer, one thing I always had to do was continuously adapt. Every other day there was a “pop-up” task that was designed so you were required to grow, learn, and help out the company. Every person on the team was given the same opportunity to do these tasks and whoever volunteered to complete these tasks had to be ready to tackle challenges and learn because some tasks called for long hours and a lot of communication and teamwork. For example, one weekend a network team surprised our group with a hardware project that required quick innovation and a short timeline. Since this particular project was a critical task, it was important that we get it done in time so all other parts of the project could be completed in a timely manner. I made sure I accommodated the network team in any way necessary. Naturally, during the course of this project we ran into some hiccups due to the unforeseen events that came with using technology. In the end, however, it all worked out and everyone was happy.
How have you found your time at Northrop Grumman?
Coming into Northrop, I knew everything would be a learning experience, but that does not stop me from feeling awkward that I do not know much about planes and military planes in particular. Thankfully, the employees here make the concept and creation of planes sound breathtaking. I am extremely passionate about helping people and being innovative so even though this was not something I thought I would be super interested in initially, this work has opened my eyes to new possibilities for my future career and that excites me.
Solving for what’s never been done, exploring the limits of possible. Is that real and true for you in your time at Northrop Grumman?
Creating something comes with a process and I know that everything I have worked on is being used somewhere to create the bigger picture. Northrop Grumman gives employees an opportunity to show their brilliance so that the company can invest in those ideas and the employees can solve for what’s never been done.
Northrop Grumman software engineers are Defining Possible every day. Click to search our software engineer job openings and apply today.
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