Is 12Y (Geospatial Engineer) a Good MOS?

AIT / Training

12 weeks

Training Location

Fort Leonard Wood, MO

Career Field

Engineer

What the Recruiter Says

You'll collect and analyze geospatial data to build the maps and terrain products that commanders use to plan everything from logistics routes to combat operations. The civilian GIS market is booming: geospatial analysts, remote sensing specialists, and cartographers are in demand at defense contractors, municipalities, federal agencies, and commercial mapping companies. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) actively recruits from this MOS. GIS analysts average $65-80K; senior analysts at NGA or defense contractors earn considerably more. Esri ArcGIS proficiency from this MOS is a direct market credential.

What It's Actually Like

You will make maps that will be wrong by the time they're printed, distributed, and used by someone who is holding them sideways. Your GIS software will be ESRI products running on government computers that were fast in 2016, and you will learn to love the spinning cursor as a meditation practice. The actual geospatial work is technically interesting — terrain analysis, route planning, data layer integration, coordinate system management — and the people who find it interesting are generally very good at it. The problem is that 'geospatial engineer' sounds more like a civilian job title than a military one, which means officers will use you for things that have nothing to do with geospatial engineering. Your clearance plus your GIS skills plus a GIS certificate from a community college puts you in line for federal contractor roles, USGS, mapping companies, and tech firms doing location intelligence. The civilian demand is legitimate. The military utilization of your actual skills is, characteristically, aspirational.