Good place for an IT Business Analyst or Project Manager - Senior Business Analyst King County Employee Review

5.0
Aug 6, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

With around 14K employees, King County is a big "company" with lots of opportunities and a wide variety of projects. Since the county is not profit-driven, the management practices aren't cut-throat like you experience in many big companies. The projects bring you a sense of doing something to help the community. Vacation time is so-so, but the rest of the benefits are stellar. If you want to leave your stamp on an IT department, this is a great place to be. Projects are moving toward Agile, and that's leading to opportunities to influence how the methodology is implemented. I do like that while there are templates for various stages of projects, there's a lot of leeway to do what's the right thing for a given project, and then to share what worked and didn't work with the rest of the team. The office is in downtown Seattle, but you may need to spend time in Kent or Renton based on the projects assigned. Everyone is in the same timezone, so there aren't meetings scheduled at 5am Pacific like you get for companies where HQ is on the East Coast. This is either a pro or con depending on your point-of-view: Business Analysts get a chance to be Project Managers and Scrum Masters because those functions aren't fully staffed right now.

Cons

This is definitely a buy vs. build shop, with an emphasis on off-the-shelf solutions. PMs and BAs spend their time on RFIs and RFPs. Vendors are selected to implement and customize solutions. Therefore this isn't the place to sharpen your coding skills, but it is a place to become familiar with big vendor solutions. It takes a while for projects to get approval and finally start. Some projects have an immediate sense of urgency once they're funded, and with others you wonder if the PM cares because they take forever to plan a kick-off.

Explore other reviews about King County

5.0
Jan 2, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great work life balance Off-site team building yearly if not more Health insurance is top Tier Pay rise yearly

Cons

No room for growth in some department

4.0
Mar 10, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Came to Rail from another division in the county, so much better than certain customer facing divisions. Work like balance and hybrid model are great. Lots of room for advancement in the admin world if you want it.

Cons

Can feel like you’re being micro managed or watched from the top at times but middle management is usually good at mitigating this.

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