Usability Opportunities

I discovered that the federal government awards contracts for usability testing. An example is the award of a contract to UserWorks, Inc. to conduct focus groups and usability testing of FirstGov.gov
(see https://www.gsa.gov/about-us/newsroom/news-releases/gsa-awards-firstgov-usability-contract-to-userworks-of-silver-spring-md).

I am definitely interested in these opportunities.

From the company webiste, UserWorks (http://www.userworks.com/index.html) seems like a good company. It is a user experience design and usability engineering firm. The team there seems outstanding. I hope it is not true that the firm is going out of business.

I will look into other usability testing firms. Some consulting firms may have UX/UI departments/areas that bid for usability contracts.
An example: I learned of a firm called Applied Information Sciences from the LinkedIn profile of UX Researcher Weimin Hou (https://www.linkedin.com/in/weiminhou) who has a PhD in Information Systems from UMBC, Human-Computer Interaction Track.