Working for a Competitor Company

A graduate student is preparing a dissertation on a government funded project to develop a new type of stent. He is offered a part-time job, working only weekends, in the shipping room of a company that manufactures various surgical appliances, including the kind of stent that his dissertation work will make obsolete.  Is this a conflict of interest?  Suppose the work were during the normal, 9-to-5 weekday?  Suppose the student is aware that this company has its own research program, without knowing any details?  Suppose, instead of the shipping room, the student is offered a job in the laboratory where this research is performed?