Riley Sinek at Invariant headquarters on September 5, 2025, where he spent his exchange as part of the PPTE program. (Photo courtesy of Riley Sinek, Yuma Test Center)
UP-AND-COMING YUMA TEST CENTER EMPLOYEES SHARE PPTE PROGRAM EXPERIENCES
by Ana Henderson
Imagine being able to swap your place of employment for six months to work at a high-tech corporation, then return to work and implement those novel concepts at your organization.
That is what two Yuma Test Center (YTC) employees are experiencing with the Public Private Talent Exchange (PPTE).
Patty Conley, program analyst for Acquisition Workforce and Developmental Employee Programs explained, “It’s part of a program arranged by the DAU [Defense Acquisition University] Human Capital Initiatives Office. They work with all our Army Acquisition Workforce to provide different programs for leadership experiences to help them develop in their roles, especially those that are rising leadership potential.”
Through the PPTE, mid-to-senior level Department of War and private sector professionals are temporarily linked to each other’s organizations, where they can gain cross-sector experience and share innovative best practices—fostering better communication and understanding between government and industry. The six-month exchange is focused on acquisition and helps both sides understand operational challenges and develop new solutions.
Engineers Riley Sinek and Leroy Duarte are both up-and-coming employees with YTC under U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground’s (YPG) extreme weather testing umbrella.
Sinek leads test programs for the Aviation Systems and Electronic Test Division’s Sensors Test Branch. He spent his exchange at Invariant Corporation in Huntsville, Alabama, a company known for hardware and sensor development, prototyping and cutting-edge custom software development.
“I have worked with Invariant Corporation at YPG as a test officer during various counter unmanned aircraft system test events and felt it was a great opportunity to see how they’ve attained their success in developing, improving, maintaining and sustaining their systems of systems,” he said.
Duarte, a YTC employee of the year, has been at the forefront of YTC’s digital transformation efforts. He spent his exchange with MORSE Corp in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The firm provides customer-focused algorithm and software development services that solve difficult, multi-disciplinary problems faced by the U.S. National Security Ecosystem.
PPTE program participant, Leroy Duarte, left, YTC, sits with MORSE Corporation employee, Conner Theberge, right, reviewing a frontend feature after a meeting at MORSE Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts on August 6, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Thompson, Yuma Test Center)
He described this first day as “a taste of working in big tech” and said it was “a very busy feeling because most employees are all on one floor of one building, not miles apart like we are at YPG.”
Duarte credits the experience for opening the door to software engineering and said, “Breaking out of your current work cycles and patterns gives you space to learn new ones. I’m learning modern approaches to workflows in software engineering, including project planning, not just the technical aspects.”
Ashley Thompson, chief, Data Processing Branch, and Duarte’s supervisor, advocated for him to nab the opportunity, which is typically reserved for upper management. “We need software engineers and data scientists getting that industry experience and bringing it back to our workforce much earlier in their careers,” she said.
Thompson is confident the skills Duarte has learned will help the branch and the organization.
“On our end, it is proving to be extremely fruitful,” she said. “Leroy is a part of two teams at MORSE working on modern software development and machine learning model training. He’s also getting great exposure into how they manage agile software development projects and can bring all of that back to YPG for us to implement within our own development teams.”
Both Sinek and Duarte returned to YTC in late-September, eager to implement what they learned. Duarte mentioned sharing ideas to “re-think how we run meetings and how often we have them, change how we document project progress and decisions.”
Sinek said, “This opportunity has been different from my typical role at YTC, since it has been much more focused on mechanical engineering design. It has given me a better understanding of how and why design choices are made, and the challenges that engineers face when designing and building systems for the warfighter. I hope to bring that back to YTC by improving communication with engineers and helping to bridge the gap between engineers and testers.”
These types of changes can streamline the workflows at YTC and ultimately get the most accurate data in the hands of those who need it to make critical decisions about test items. This chain reaction is what Conley says the PPTE program is all about. “It allows them [mid-to-senior level Department of War civilians] to challenge their abilities and help troubleshoot some of the things that are happening here, while also leading the change to what our private industry partners are doing.”
For more information on eligibility, go to the United States Army Acquisition Support Center’s website at https://asc.army.mil/web/career-development/programs/dod-ppte.
ANA HENDERSON is a public affairs specialist at U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground in Yuma, Arizona. She holds a B.A. in English from Northern Arizona University and a certificate in public relations from Rutgers.
