Because I was working remotely for most of my time at Raytheon, I decided to move back to Rochester, NY and buy a house. About a year after moving back, my boss unexpectedly insisted that I return to the office. Faced with the choice of resigning or relocating again, I chose to resign and began searching for a position closer to home in NY.

My path to this job wasn’t exactly straightforward. I began applying to various positions to explore what I truly wanted to do with my career. After applying for what I thought was a controls engineering position, a recruiter reached out and suggested I send my résumé to a company called Orolia Defense. There wasn’t a specific job posting, but they were impressed with my background and scheduled an interview for the following week.

At the time, I had multiple offers on the table, but Orolia stood out because of the exciting work they were doing. The role was heavily focused on research and development, and I was particularly drawn to the opportunity to work on RF automation. Shortly after I joined, Orolia was acquired by Safran and became Safran Federal Systems (SFS).