I'm closing in on 20 years at the US Naval Research Lab. Which, contra the name, mostly works on basic research - AI, chemistry, meteorology, space weather, and

I'm closing in on 20 years at the US Naval Research Lab. Which, contra the name, mostly works on basic research - AI, chemistry, meteorology, space weather, and a cutting edge spacecraft engineering group. It's a pretty good gig. The working environment is, AFAIK, pretty similar to the DOE labs. The pay is lower than FAANG, but the work life balance is a whole lot better, the research facilities are terrific, and the research money is a lot better than, say, in academia. We tend not to recruit young engineers that well. We tend to have more success recruiting folks who have been in industry and have come to realize that paycheck size is not the only thing to look for in a career. There are a handful of non-DOE government labs around that are similar. Not all NASA labs, but NASA/Langley and NASA/Ames are research focused. There are also FFRDCs, which are a bit more towards the applications side (hence, a bit closer to industry than academia). JPL, APL, MITRE, etc. They all have different focuses depending on how comfortable you are being close to the military-industrial complex (MITRE) or not (JPL). Also, as a suggestion completely from left field: the State Department is always looking for people with an engineering background to work in the foreign service. They do a lot of negotiations around and provide assistance in engineering-related fields, but engineers don't tend to view the foreign service as a career. So if you sign up you get to bypass the normal seniority-based foreign service career path, and you get assigned to an American embassy somewhere overseas (usually, as I understand it, in Europe or Asia). They cover your living expenses on top of your salary. If you love to travel, it's a thing to consider.