Insitu executives are visiting Mississippi State University this week and said they are excited about the growth opportunities a partnership with the university provides.
The Washington-based company is a Boeing subsidiary that designs unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and supporting software for military and commercial use.
Last year, Insitu announced it would use space in MSU’s Thad Cochran Research and Economic Development Park. This week, executives visited the company’s space in the MSU Industrial Partners Building in the research park, and to recruit for two positions at the location.
Mississippi State is the lead university in the Federal Aviation Administration’s Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence (ASSURE) program. The university is also an FAA Center of Excellence.
Benjamin Tarkany coordinates talent acquisition at Insitu. He said the company will recruit at MSU career fair today and is engaged in other recruitment efforts through social media and MSU’s Career Center.
He said early recruitment has focused on engineering, because much of the office’s work will focus on technical aspects.
“We have established a vision of what we want to do with the office,” Tarkany said. “At first it was more (looking at) what are the capabilities in the area, and we’ve aligned what we can do project-wise with the talent pool here and what we think we can realistically bring to sit out of this office and see benefit from it.
“We’re engaging candidates here locally and we’re also hoping to bolster our applicants by being here and present,” he later added.
Salaries for the positions will depend on recruits’ evaluated skill set, Tarkany said, but Insitu is providing high-skill, high-wage jobs. The company may also offer an internship position in the summer.
Insitu Vice President and General Manager Jon Damush said initial work at the MSU facility will focus on FAA certification needed to operate unmanned aircraft in U.S. airspace, as well as technologies and operational concepts.
Damush said the Golden Triangle provides valuable open airspace that’s not necessarily available in the company’s Columbia River Gorge home in south Washington. Damush also said Insitu may look at partnerships in academia and industry that complement the company’s work.
“As you might expect, tall mountains and the weather that entails is not necessarily a conducive flight environment,” he said. “In our efforts to expand outside the gorge, we had been looking for years for other places to stand up Insitu facilities.
“The challenge in that is that you might be able to find a place that has conducive airspace, but most of the time conducive airspace is not co-located with any kind of infrastructure or human resources capacity, let alone an academic capacity,” Damush added. “When we became aware of what was happening at Mississippi State with the ASSURE program and economic development efforts that are going on here, to us it looked like the perfect alignment of factors.”
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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