Julia Ouimet

Sometimes it’s good to get in on the ground floor. It certainly worked out well for Julia Ouimet, whose first job at Artlin Consulting was as an entry-level requirements analyst collecting attribute-based access control (ABAC) requirements for the Defense Department’s Defense Acquisition Visibility Environment.

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DAVE is DOD’s next-generation, API-driven reporting system, slated to go live in the first quarter of fiscal 2017. It’s intended to be a critical tool for the military’s acquisition analysis, insight and decision-making, but ensuring that DAVE delivers entailed countless hours of deciphering and documenting complex requirements and legacy-system business rules.

Ouimet did just that, quickly becoming Artlin’s functional expert on ABAC and a go-to resource for DOD stakeholders at a very senior level. Her role expanded to focus on user experience, agile development and business analysis, and she ultimately became product owner for Artlin’s DAVE efforts.

Ouimet consistently delivers “a level of expertise normally found in more seasoned...subject-matter experts,” said one supervisor, who ranked her as comparable to a GS-13 or 14 specialist.

And though she is just a few years out of school herself, Ouimet has already begun mentoring students who are doing internships in the federal IT community.