Careers: Applicant FAQs
Job Applicant Frequently Asked Questions
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What is Numerica?
Numerica Corporation is a global leader in defense technology and information science. Since 1996, Numerica has been an agile and innovative small business bringing together the best people to research and deliver solutions to the world's most challenging scientific problems.
How big is your company and where are you located?
Numerica Corporation has nearly 50 employees working in Loveland, Colorado, and Pasadena, California. Our corporate headquarters is located in Loveland.
What kind of work do you do?
Numerica provides state-of-the-art research and product development primarily in the technical categories of air and missile defense, layered sensing, cyber security, geospatial information systems (GIS), chemical and biological detection, and space situational awareness.
Which majors, or what academic backgrounds, are you looking for?
We're looking for candidates with advanced degrees in applied and computational mathematics, computer engineering, computer science and scientific computing, electrical engineering, industrial and systems engineering, mechanical engineering with an emphasis on controls, statistics, and other related fields. Technical candidates should demonstrate a strong understanding of numerical methods, algorithm design, statistics, signal processing, optimization, detection/estimation, and/or control theory.
What would I work on at Numerica?
Our technical teams develop advanced algorithms and perform scientific computing to address a variety of information science problems. Areas of work include, but are not limited to: tracking and data fusion systems, probability theory, statistics, random processes, controls, dynamical systems, radar and IR signal processing, full-motion video tracking, sensor resource management, software development, simulation, estimation theory, chemical detection, GIS data compression, and cyber security.
Do you have any internships?
Yes. We offer paid internships at the graduate level.
Do you hire undergraduate students?
Yes. We hire undergraduates with strong backgrounds in controls, statistics, and other related fields. Technical candidates should demonstrate a strong understanding of numerical methods, algorithm design, statistics, signal processing, optimization, detection/estimation, and/or control theory.
Do you hire international students or foreign nationals?
All current job openings require U.S. citizenship.
Do you provide on-the-job training?
Yes. We actively hire talented scientists and engineers with broad technical backgrounds who may not have direct experience with our project areas. Our scientists and engineers work closely each day with their program directors to develop the knowledge and skills needed to provide solutions for our customers' challenging and unique problems. We also offer tuition reimbursement, memberships in professional organizations and subscriptions to relevant academic and trade publications.
Will I have the opportunity to publish at Numerica?
Yes. We're true academics at heart, so we encourage our staff to publish papers that grow out of their project work, and to collaborate closely with our academic and industry peers to advance the science of information and state-of-the-art technologies. A list of published papers is available at www.numerica.us under The Science section.
Will I be able to work on a project from start to finish?
Yes. Numericans are often encouraged to carry their research through the entire process, from problem statement to prototype to real-world application.
What kind of job openings do you have?
A complete list of job openings and our online application form is available at www.numerica.us under our Careers section.
What is your hiring process?
Applications are received online at www.numerica.us under our Careers section, and candidates are encouraged to attach their résumé and academic transcripts when applying. You will be sent an email confirming we received your application. We review every application, and if we feel your background is a good match for a current opening, we will contact you for an initial, non-technical phone screening. The next step is a technical phone interview with at least two members of our management team. Once you pass the technical phone interview, we'll invite you to our corporate headquarters for a final interview to provide a technical presentation to members of our team, and to answer and ask additional questions. Offers are generally made within two weeks of the technical presentation. Candidates applying for a California job opening must be willing to spend 12 to 24 months in training at Numerica's Colorado headquarters before being assigned to the Pasadena office.
Are you a publicly traded or privately held company?
Numerica is an employee-owned, privately held company.
Is Numerica a growing company?
Yes. Since our founding in 1996, we've expanded our Colorado headquarters significantly, opened a California office in 2010, and grew revenues by 154 percent over the last four years. Because of this growth, Numerica was recognized by Colorado Governor Bill Ritter and the Edward Lowe Foundation as a Colorado Company to Watch – a national award that celebrates growing businesses that positively transform the nation's economy. In early 2011, Numerica was one of only 44 companies in the nation to win the SBA's Tibbett's Award for exceptional innovation and growth in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Numerica's reputation, strong industry relationships, and commitment to providing solutions for the most challenging problems, continues to generate growing demand for its products and services. To meet this demand, Numerica actively recruits top talent from the best technical schools in the nation.
Do you offer comprehensive benefits?
We strive to offer an extremely competitive benefits package for Numericans. We value people, so taking care of our team is a top priority. A list of benefits can be found online at www.numerica.us under our Careers section.
What is your corporate culture like?
Numerica is employee-owned, so the intellectual athletes on Numerica's diverse and talented team work efficiently and collaboratively. Numericans like a good challenge and we take pride in contributing to something much bigger than ourselves. We value entrepreneurship, the pursuit of excellence, integrity in all things, our people, financial responsibility and total customer satisfaction. A healthy work-life balance is highly encouraged at Numerica. In addition to receiving traditional benefits, some additional perks of working at Numerica include: bagel Fridays, free monthly massages, induction into the Bobblehead Hall of Fame, health club membership reimbursement, one week paid leave between Christmas and New Year's Day, and annual social events like the Christmas Party, Winter Ski Trip and Summer Family Picnic.
What makes Numerica different from other companies in your industry?
At Numerica, each person is expected to show innovation, be independent and take ownership of the projects they work on from start to finish. While creative thinkers are working on some wonderful projects at bigger companies, the projects are often so large they get divided into many small pieces. When you get assigned to your small piece of the problem at another company, you often can't change the direction of the bigger project – even if you know a better solution – because you may not have access to upper-level management. This isn't the case at Numerica. At Numerica, the teams are smaller, they're drawn from various levels of the hierarchy, and you might just find yourself working with the CEO on a project. Everyone at Numerica has a voice to suggest better, creative approaches to a problem, and diverse perspectives are always appreciated.
Can you describe the quality of life in Northern Colorado? Southern California?
Community profiles about Where We Live and Work are available at www.numerica.us under the Careers section. We also encourage you to explore www.bestplaces.net for more information about individual cities of interest.
How close will I be to a major metropolitan area in Northern Colorado?
Southern California?
Loveland is one hour's drive from Denver (pop. 2.8 million), and Pasadena is located in the heart of the greater metropolitan Los Angeles area (pop. 17.8 million).
My spouse will need to find a new job if I accept a position with Numerica. What is the
job market like in Colorado? California?
According to the Denver Metro Economic Development Council, Colorado has the second-strongest economic outlook in the nation, and ranks second-highest for educated workforce, third for high-tech employment, sixth in clean energy employment, and ninth in clean energy job growth. We encourage you to benchmark salaries and explore the cost of living index for Colorado and California using third-party sites like www.payscale.com and www.bestplaces.net.