• Question: Which skills and abilities are essential for engineering?

    Asked by Maya Gyosheva to Vinita, Rachel, Pam, Christopher, Brian, Andrew on 7 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Pam Anderson

      Pam Anderson answered on 7 Mar 2019:

      Problem solving skills in addition to technical skills in Maths and Science subjects is a good start. Most people don’t realise that top of engineering companies list for employees is someone with good communication skills! Written and spoken communication is key to being a good engineer. You also need to be able to work well in a team.

    • Photo: Christopher Youens

      Christopher Youens answered on 10 Mar 2019:

      Problem solving skills are essential, and with that I’d recommend learning how to program. If you get an opportunity to play with a Raspberry Pi, go for it! These are great little computers that are capable of doing awesome projects, there have even been units sent to space!

      Being able to work as part as a team, and communicate effectively is such a valuable skill. When there’s a problem with a satellite I need to be able to reach out to our specialist engineers (power, software, thermal, etc), describe the problem and work with them to determine a solution.

    • Photo: Rachel Hudson

      Rachel Hudson answered on 13 Mar 2019:

      In my role, attention to detail is really important as we have to make sure we don’t miss any mistakes. Also flexibility and readiness to tackle any problems we are unfamiliar with is important too as we are quite a small team so we have to all help each other out. For this reason too, good communication and ability to work well in a team is crucial!

Comments