When I was in school I didn’t really have a definite career plan. By the time it came to my Leaving Cert, I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. After researching a huge variety of careers options I found that Engineering was a good fit for what I might enjoy pursuing. I took a closer look at the various courses available through the CAO, and Electronic Engineering offered a good mix of theory, lab work, and project work. They also had a 6 month work placement in third year, which I felt would be a huge advantage to me with any potential employer.

 I was lucky one sense, that the year I graduated was a great time for Electronic Engineering students. There was a huge shortage of electronic engineers, and we had companies that were coming into the college to persuade us to join their company. I had four job offers before taking my final exams, ranging from Process Engineering, Software engineering, Hardware Design Engineering and Test Engineering. In the end I chose Hardware and haven’t looked back since. I took up employment with a multi-national corporation that designed and manufactured power supplies.

After a number of years I had progressed to a team leader position and the opportunity was there for me to enter management if desired. However, I wanted to stick with an engineering role, and eventually was promoted to the position of senior design engineer. This was a fantastic experience, because at that time we were developing new technologies, and incorporating software onto our power supplies. This meant I had to learn a completely new skill set, which expanded my engineering abilities greatly.

After eight years of working for this multi-national I moved to my current position in Excelsys Technologies. I’m still in the power supply industry, but now I am working in a much smaller company, and it’s also 100% Irish owned. This has been a great move for me, and I have a much larger influence on the direction the company takes as we grow the business.

As I have previously mentioned, the year I graduated was a great one for electronic engineering students. All of my graduating class had at least two offers before we had sat our final exams. At the time I had the offer of either taking up a Process Engineering, Software, Test or Hardware Design Engineering position with four different companies.

I picked hardware because that was what I most interested after completing my Electronics degree. I chose a multi-national company, and my advice to any graduate would be to start your career with an international company. Many of these companies will have formal graduate training programs in place, with pre defined career opportunities in place. Learning in a well established, and well structured environment will be crucial to any engineer entering the workforce for the first time.

After 12 months I left this company to work as a test engineer. At the time I didn’t want to commit my career to hardware design. I left on very good terms with the promise that if it didn’t work out I should make contact again. After 12 months I decided that my initial choice was what I wanted to pursue, and I was soon working again at my first company. I was promoted to team leader for a small engineering team, and the opportunity presented itself to pursue a career in management, but I wanted to stick with an engineering role. Eventually I was promoted to a senior design engineering position where I continued to design power supplies up until 2006. This was a very exciting time for me, and professionally my career really advanced.

In 2006 an opportunity arose to join a small Irish company that was moving its headquarters from Dublin to Cork. This company was Excelsys Technologies. The role was to head up the Applications Engineering group. I met with the Managing Director, who had previously headed up European Operations for the first company I had worked for. I also knew some of the other staff, again having previously worked with them. We now have a concentrated group of very experienced engineers, designing some of the highest power density power supplies in our chosen market.

I have a huge variety in my daily schedule, and for me there is no such thing as a typical day. We have sales world wide, ranging from The United States, Europe, Israel, The Far East, and even Australia. And because of this my day can start and finish at any hour of the day. Sometimes the day can start with a conference call with customer’s in the Far East, followed by another meeting with a European based customer around mid day, and finally an evening call with a customer in for example California.

The variety is huge, and really keeps me on my toes! Activities are constantly being re-scheduled to meet our customer’s requirements, and because we support the customer’s applications, this may oftern require our immediate attention. Sometimes the issue is relatively straight forward and I can answer by a return email. Other times it might involve some laboratory work, and occasionally it is not possible to resolve the issue without travelling to the customer’s location. If this is the case, then we co-ordinate with the customer to arrange flights, transfers, hotel accommodation etc.

I am also responsible for International regulatory issues on our products. These are the requirements for selling electronic goods in some international markets, especially into medical applications. Often this requires co-ordinating with the various international bodies to ensure our product meets the required standards, and includes quarterly visits to our manufacturing facilities in Eastern Europe and the Far East.

In my current role I also am responsible for updating the senior management team on aspects of the groups work. We get together once a month to discuss all aspects of the business, both engineering and commercial. This usually takes place at the start of every month, so some of my time is spent collaborating reports for these meetings. As the electronics industry continues to change, larger companies over the years have reduced their in house power supply experts. Because of this we see a lot of customers who do not understand the intricacies of using a power supply. So some of my time is spent either writing papers for customers or putting together some training material to help them understand the issues as they may arise.

My main task is to deal with any technical issue that arises in the customer’s application. This could be anything from an engineer evaluating our product for the first time or an application failure in a mature design. As issues arise I will assess the workload involved in trying to reach a solution, identify team members, and project manage the event until completion. This also involves agreeing this schedule with the customer, and keeping them up to date with our progress.

I am also responsible for International regulatory issues on our products. These are the requirements for selling electronic goods in some international markets, especially into medical applications. This involves making sure that the files are kept up to date, and addressing any issues that may arise from quarterly inspections by these bodies.

Working with people from all over the globe is really great. You get to see how different people can solve the same problem in many different ways. It’s also a fantastic way to experience different cultures when you get the opportunity to travel to these locations.

Over the last few years I've been lucky enough to travel extensively throughout the States, Europe, Israel, China and Korea, and work with engineers from all of these places. You also get to realise that beneath it all, engineers are the same all over the world. There are technical problems to solve, and we love to solve them!!!

Our power supplies are being used in a number of different applications including some medical devices. These devices include some post natal care machines for new born babies, some equipment that is being used in cancer analysis and also some cancer treatment machinery. I have worked in conjunction with these engineering teams to incorporate our part into their applications, so it’s very rewarding to know that you’ve played a small part in helping other people in their daily lives.

My current role is applications support, which involves a lot of travel to customer’s research laboratories as problems arise. There have been several high profile projects that I have been involved in where the customer has struggled to properly integrate our product into their application. The only way for me to resolve the issue was to travel to the customer’s location and work with their engineering teams on site (Most companies do not have in-house resident experts in power). This usually involves a few days of understanding the application, then trying to identify the problem and finally implementing a solution that is acceptable to the customer. I have completed this in many locations including the United States, Israel and throughout Europe. I have also worked on projects in Hong Kong, China and Korea. It is always rewarding to fix, what is often a high pressure situation, and it gives the customer confidence to stay with our company for future projects.

I think I am good with dealing with people. I find it easy to talk to anybody regardless of what their professional background might be, and can comfortably talk at very technical levels (on subjects I know about!!), but also to break it out to a higher level as the audience may require.

I have confidence in my abilities, but at the same time am aware of my limits, and if I don’t know the answer will not try to bluff one. I also like to finish things that I have started, and often get caught up in projects to ensure they are completed to a level that the issue demands. And above all , I never take myself too seriously, and if I didn’t enjoy doing this job on a daily basis I would look for an alternative career.

Self confidence; as a student you will learn the foundations of your profession in your college curriculum. When you commence working you will gain the experience necessary to carry out your chosen profession. And in time you will gain enough experience so that people will start to look to you for your opinion or to give them a solution. You need to have confidence in your own ability, or you will not convince those around you, that your view is one that should be considered.

Be knowledge hungry; The Engineering community is a knowledge sharing environment, and every engineer loves to teach! Listen to others around you, and learn from them. Eventually you will find yourself making contributions to these discussions. When I started my career a very wise engineer gave me this advice that has stuck with me throughout my time as an engineer, “Remember that there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers…”

Be willing to role up your sleeves and get dirty; you should never have the attitude that a job is below you. Some of the best lessons I have learned are by doing the tasks from the ground up. For example, if a process is being put in place to build something, the slickest solution will always come from someone who has been through every aspect of the job in the past. The best solutions on paper are often terrible ideas in practice, because they have been designed by someone who does not have any practical experience. The only way to get this experience is by rolling up your sleeves and getting dirty!