I made over $225,000 in a year as a 27-year-old government contractor overseas — and got paid to travel in my free time

• Symoné Berry made over $225k working as an overseas US government tech contractor.
• While in Taiwan, she took a week off every month and received "rest and relaxation" pay to travel.
• Berry sometimes worked 90+ hour weeks — the benefits were worth it to her but it's not for everyone.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Symoné Berry, a 31-year-old government contractor living in Atlanta. Her jobs and income have been verified by BI. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I always knew I wanted a government contracting job.

My mom was a mortgage underwriter and we lived in the DC area. She would always tell me about these overseas government contractors who lived in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they would buy $500,000 houses in all cash.

I didn't know how I was going to do it and I didn't know anything about it — but I knew that's what I wanted to do.

At 16, I started to build my career in government tech and went to vocational school. From there, I went to Christopher Newport University on a basketball scholarship and eventually transferred to Virginia Commonwealth University. I graduated with my bachelor's degree in computer science with a minor in math.

I had seven job offers by the time I graduated

I graduated in the fall of 2014 with seven job offers, a mix of federal and government contract roles.

I accepted an offer as a level one embedded engineer for $72,500 a year at Raytheon, a defense contractor. I started on the first Monday of January 2015 in their Fort Meade office.

Over the next two years, I wrote code for Raytheon's radars and started looking at internal positions abroad. I figured out that I needed to get a CompTIA Security Plus authorization to work in many of the overseas positions. It took me about a month to get the certification and then another three months of interviewing and training before I started my first job overseas.

I lived in the snowiest city in the world, making $140,000 a year

As a radar systems engineer in Japan, I made just over $140,000 a year and had all of my living expenses and food paid for. I lived in a spacious one-bedroom apartment that was provided for me in Aomori Prefecture, a few minutes away from the site.

My job was to make sure that the radar system was up and running 24/7. At the time, North Korea was shooting missiles over Japan and our job was to monitor them. Most of the time, we were sitting ducks. But there were times when something did go wrong and I had to go to site at four in the morning.

In Aomori, I worked 12-hour days about four days a week and then I had off from Thursday night until Monday morning.

On the weekends, I would usually travel with my coworkers. You make a lot of friends on the job because you're all living in the same place. I went to Tokyo almost every weekend.

Aomori is the snowiest place in the world. It gets 26 feet of snow every year.

I would walk to work in a blizzard with ski goggles and a face mask on. I don't like the cold and after that first winter, I didn't ever want to go through another winter there again.

I worked 90+ hour weeks in Taiwan, but the money and time off made it worth it

After a year and a half in Japan, I started a new job in Taiwan as a senior testing engineer. At this point, I was 27 making about $225,000 a year.

My housing was paid for and there was an on-site chef to cook staff meals — but the hours were crazy.

When I started, I only had two days off every 10 days and I worked about 92 hours a week. After a few months, I negotiated my contract so that I worked three weeks straight and then got a full week off every month. During that week, I would usually visit my girlfriend in California.

I also received a quarterly pay of $2,500 for "rest and relaxation" pay, referred to as R&R. This is money that compensates for the long hours so that staff can travel during their time off. It varies in each job. In Japan, I only received $1,500 annually for R&R.

South Korea was hands down the best overseas role I had

After Taiwan, I deployed to South Korea as a senior system administrator for about $220,000 a year.

That was hands down the best living situation I had. I had a really nice three-bedroom apartment and a car rental. Plus, the surrounding area was great.

We were close to Osan Air Force Base and there were a ton of Americans in the area. I worked 50 hours a week in that role and was able to work from home sometimes there because if we weren't flying we really didn't need to be there.

During my weekends in South Korea, I didn't travel much because of Covid but I went to Seoul a few times.

This career path isn't for everyone

This lifestyle is all I know and I have no regrets.

But it's not for everyone.

Doing years of long-distance took a toll on my relationship and for people who have a family or struggle to be alone, this job would be very difficult.

Also, most of the places I worked were remote and in isolated areas. If that's a problem for you, this job path isn't the right one.

If you don't like to work long hours, I also don't suggest entering this field. Overseas government contract work requires at least 50 hours a week. It also often comes with a long commute to site — in Taiwan, it took us an hour to get down the mountain every day. While this is covered by the contractor, it still takes time out of your already long day.

But I love traveling and experiencing different cultures. Plus, this career path allowed me to save money and get into investing since I had no living expenses for years. I've saved up enough money now that I can take time off for myself and start my own business.

Over the last year, I stopped working and started building my online presence and a nonprofit called GovTech Foundation, which provides career guidance for government jobs. I might do a short-term contract to make quick money, but right now, I'm 31 and enjoying the time off to travel and focus on personal projects.

Do you work in a government job? We'd like to hear from you. Email the reporter from a non-work email at [email protected].