Fancy joining the SAS's secret hacker squad in Hereford as an electronics engineer for £33k? A job ad blunder by the UK's Ministry of Defence has accidentally revealed the existence of a secret SAS mobile hacker squad. The secretive Computer Network Operations (CNO) Exploitation Unit had its cover blown on the MoD's external job ad website, as spotted by the ever eagle-eyed Alan Turnbull of Secret Bases. Based in …
About £3k more for the same role with fewer requirements. Both of them claim you’ll be working for a team of elites, both of them claim the skills you will develop will be invaluable, except that you can’t disclose what you’ve been up to, so it’s all meaningless drivel.
I’m sure the pension is great though,
A friend interviewed for GCHQ some years back. The process was bizarre. I was his 2nd reference and had a multi page questionnaire to complete. His first reference had an in person interview. My friend was interviewed for 2 days.
All this was just for the security clearance which - get this - you have to go through BEFORE they tell you what the job is and what it pays.
After jumping through the hoops my mate finally discovers that the job was a java programming job at 10K a year less than he was currently on. Much time could have been saved etc.
But it all makes work for the working man to do.
"UK government being a bunch of skinflints.... again"
Au contraire mon ami...
The UK government can be very generous:
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/13/mckinsey_awarded_3m_8_week_contract/
...to chums and prospective future employers/directorships
Hum. That list matches my previous job. Unfortunately, so does the pay (€37k. Which equals £31500. In Dublin. I'm an idiot). I was working for a "startup company" aligned to an Irish University on an EU Horizon 2020 project. That's the usual pay level on those type of projects (it's often less).
As you can imagine they spend an awful lot of time whining about not being able to find qualified people. (I was older and not employed so felt I didn't have a choice). I've seen plenty of roles like "Experienced ARM Cortex M developer wanted. €30k." In Cork. They should really mention that you'll be living in a green bin.
Should have gone into finance (or adult movies, there's a certain amount of overlap there!).
Too true. But also, I suspect they want this person due to off the shelf kit no longee being repairable and the reason we should all be for Right To Repair.
But really? Create prototypes for that shit money? Although better paid than me that person could take their prototype and sell it for alot more than 33k.
I came to the comments section to express the same thought.
I worked as a university electronics technician for over 26 years - a job I left over four and a half years ago and was earning almost £40k a year back then, which was as high as you could go on the pay scale without taking on managerial duties - not my cup of tea. Education doesn't pay well for the skills people have either, although the pension is decent and the working environment is relaxed.
I'd say I have pretty much all of those skills although I'm certainly not the cleverest of people out there. Work as a university electronics technician tends to mean you end up as "a jack of all trades and a master of none" to an extent. With that said, it seems like poor pay to me, so if they want truly clever people with all of those skills they really need to pay more.
Happened here in US. When I graduated from college, there were ads which, from job description, made it clear the US was still running their Star Wars program (that had supposedly been discontinued when I was in grade school). And these were not vague jobs listings were one could put two and two together to figure out what was going on, they were pretty specific descriptions of what one would be working on.
(Note, I would not bring up the specific program etc., but it doesn't matter now, several years later they had some public demos anyway, so it's common knowledge that these supposedly discontinued projects were ongoing.)
The MoD wouldn't want to employ the sort or person who works because they have to, now would they? Of course not, they want a gentleman, a man with a private income that will give all for his country out of patriotism. A chap who went to the right school and will be happier to drive his own Bentley than a company car.
more like an Aston.
Sounds like they are after an Army Q, but wanting post-grad electronics for 33k is pathetic. Also what kind of pressure are the civvies under if it's a Lt Col in command? Sounds like they really wanted a qualified soldier but couldn't find one capable of original thought.
Sounds like they really wanted a qualified soldier but couldn't find one capable of original thought.
I think that lot have a lot of original thoughts, given extensive post-graduate training and experience in skullduggery and shenanigans. Fitness only gets you so far.
But agree on the salary, especially for central London. In the private sector, it can be hard enough to attract and retain the best staff on salaries much higher. But on a positive note, it could be worse. At least it's not based in Milton Keynes.
One valid excuse, for being pipped to the post, is that you haven't be paying very close attention, Gareth? :-)...... https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2021/08/12/china_new_rule_of_law_plan/#c_4314421
Having said that though, such shenanigans as have secretive Computer Network Operations (CNO) Exploitation Units secrets exploited and exported, are by intelligent design practically impossible to virtually recognise as something for any sort of immediate particular or constant peculiar attention.
And to tell y'all the truth, no matter how much the Public and Military Sector might prefer it to be different, is its IT and AI abilities and capabilities Primarily Proprietary Private and Premium Pirate Hosting Terrain, which has covetous conventional competition and traditional status quo opposition forces and services rendered both catastrophically ineffective and overwhelmingly vulnerable to increasingly rapid and irreversibly damaging defeats ...... which is the/a Much Bigger Picture Show too.
Although, having said that, maybe there is a Lt Col with such necessary savvy and a SAS facility successfully ACTively engaged and stealthily deployed at work, rest and play in such fields? However would you ever rightly know?
And if the MoD and secret SAS mobile hacker squads on UK Special Forces (UKSF) operations aren't programmed and programming to deal effectively and decisively with such competition and/or opposition as is exposed in informative tales from other intelligence sources at the belligerent end of the practical scales, ...... From PsyOp to MindWar ..... that will be an extremely lucrative and exceptionally rewarding, wholly private and pirate mercenary affair, which cannot help but reflect very badly upon the available intelligence of MoD leadership, both in-house from those dressed in uniform and those others in the shadows elsewhere in civvies thinking to pull almighty strings pimping and pumping and dumping missions for future engagement.
Plenty of lads will give their eye-teeth for a start like this. If it goes well, they will be able to branch out into all sorts of spooky work. Plus, international finance and security companies will look at a CV like this and make all kinds of offers. And after medical, pension and career progression is taken into account, £33k will grow pretty quick. Kingsman anyone?
If it's a degree level start it's not too bad. Not sure how fast it will grow though. A friend looked at Qinetiq years ago and realised none of the actual engineers were getting paid that much. Not as derisory as some of the GCHQ starting salaries when they started advertising openly.
(Possibly, as above, they're looking for people who can't be bought as they already have all the cash they could want?)
Not sure, the only qualification mentioned is a BSc, and none of the rest of it has the "demonstrate..." or similar specification I'd expect if they were looking for prior experience. There's an exciting Q-branch list of responsibilities, but it could all be interpreted at a range of levels, the most basic of which is not too dissimilar to a final year engineering project.
> and will be tasked with delivering prototype solutions directly to the soldiers and officers of a unique and specialised military unit.
I've heard of staff being parachuted in to a project but the chance of that happening for this job seems rather more literal. Is there danger money and a fitness test?
In my experience, one of the bigger hurdles in gaining clearances above basic is having any financial worries, as they believe this makes you more vulnerable to bribes. Which is probably absolute poppycock as I'm sure you can bribe the well off!
Nevertheless, given this is what they mistakenly believe, surely it's mad to underpay your talent so badly?
The Truth is sometimes stranger than Fiction. Some years ago the company I was working at got a contract to design/improve a piece of FPGA based hardware, stuff that looked as if it came out of a tank. The contract itself was from one of those defense companies that had hollowed out its development capability till all that was left was a project manager. The work was done by the only FPGA people we had, one being Russian, the other Chinese. Its true that both were naturalized US citizens -- obviously, being DoD work it had to be undertaken by 'merkans -- but it was still somewhat ironic.
(Since the cost of living -- and housing -- is now similar between California and much of the UK the 33K figure is a bit of a joke given the job expectations. The work might be interesting but we all have to eat.)
Commentards are (enjoyably) treating this as a realistic job spec
Most will have seen civilian job adverts with similar role and skill inflation once Marketing and Senior Management have bigged up the job spec to make their unit look far more important than it is
Probably looking for a JavaScript programmer who once held a soldering iron by the non hurty end.
For 33k you'd be lucky to get someone with a worthless CEH certificate who thinks because they've taken a course on how to use outdated script kiddy tools against a vulnerable Web app that they're now a leet h4><0r. Or maybe someone who has taken an equally wordy and irrelevant Cissp exam.
I've worked in information security for 20 years now and what we DO need in the industry is the bedroom nerd who ACTUALLY understands the technology at a low level, not someone who has watched spooks and thinks they can learn to hack on a course. It's all about the mindset and actual technical ability. 33k would also be an insult of course.
The older professionals like myself will retire in due course and we'll be leaving your information in the hands of CEH certificate holders who can't even install windows on a pc. They're capable of running tools that other people have created and that's about it. I have direct experience of many staff like this.
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