• Question: Where did you start working in engineering, what was your first job?

    Asked by Joshua3117 to Vinita, Rachel, Pam, Christopher, Brian, Andrew on 1 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Rachel Hudson

      Rachel Hudson answered on 1 Mar 2019:

      I started working as an engineer in this job, so working at a university. My first proper job after uni was as a business analyst, but I have had many other part time jobs like waitressing, tutoring and supermarket work to earn extra money as a teenager!

    • Photo: Brian Weaver

      Brian Weaver answered on 3 Mar 2019:

      My first job in engineering was during a 6-month internship my junior year at the university. The company designed drinking water and waste water systems. My friends that did not do any internships had a hard time finding a job after graduation. Some of them had to wait over one year to find an engineering job!

    • Photo: Pam Anderson

      Pam Anderson answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      My first job in Engineering was when I finished my PhD. I had two part-time research jobs at the time.

      The first was analysing how best to build components for aircraft and then testing how well the computer simulations worked by making the parts on a huge press that went up to 500 degrees!

      At the time, I also worked on a European Space Agency project looking at how we could use satellites orbiting the Earth to have a better view of the North and South Pole of the Earth to tackle things like climate change.

    • Photo: Christopher Youens

      Christopher Youens answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      I actually started as a sales engineer for a sensor company after I graduated from my undergraduate degree, I did that for nearly four years before I decided to go and do my Master’s in Astronautics. After that I had a brief internship at the European Space Agency, and then my job here. Was the best choice I ever made for my career.

    • Photo: Andrew Ratcliffe

      Andrew Ratcliffe answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      My first job was in Airbus within their future programmes team. My role was as a systems engineering designing new missions and technology for the European Space Agency. This ranged from testing Mars Rovers in a Mars analogue in Tenerife, to designing a harpoon to capture space debris to designing a Phobos sample return mission.

Comments