Connie Wilson was named one of The Top 50 Women in Engineering in 2019 She details a day in the life of a Senior Systems Engineer for Female First UK
As Senior Systems Engineer in BAE Systems’ Naval Ships business, I am responsible for the Meteorological and Oceanographic system which collates and analyses the environmental information that a ship is operating in.
My day tends to start off with a regular walk through the office, not only via the kitchen to fetch coffee, but to clock up those Fitbit essential steps! Moving around throughout the day makes the brain function so much better – or so I’ve been told!
My daily tasks are like a 5000-piece jigsaw puzzle, without the picture on the lid to go by. One day you will be working on stress calculations of infrastructure that must retain the weight of equipment on a ship surface, and the next you may be looking at the way data is collected, how equipment is used, and analysing if there’s any potential impact on marine mammals in the locality of the ship.
What I love about my job is that each day we’ll achieve something that will eventually make a system work for those at the operational end of things, on-board a huge ship, such as the Type 26 frigate, in the middle of a vast ocean. It is good to know that something the team and I work on can support the Royal Navy, to keep them safe and sometimes mean the difference between mission failure and success in a military situation.