On the morning of 5th December we were joined by Gabby Costigan, who is an engineer for BAE systems.
Gabby set out the how her company’s engineering work spans a number of areas, including designing and building everything from tiny drones to fighter jets. The company also works in space, overseeing lower orbit satellites and providing computing power for vehicles exploring other planets such as Mars. The company is also involved in cyber work, including cyber protection to governments and finance companies and embedding cyber resilience into products and equipment so they can’t be hacked.
Gabby talked about all the different career opportunities coming from working in engineering with a company like BAE, and that there were a breadth of enjoyable aspects to the job as well as the hard work. Gabby shared a picture of one occasion where she met President Zelensky through the company’s work in Ukraine. Gabby also met many famous actors over her career including to name a few Tom Cruise, George Clooney and Brad Pitt through her work at the embassy, support for movies and air engineering shows.
Pupils were very interested in the salary possibilities - Gabby explained the mix of shares and bonus awarded to those in finance and even revealed the possibility of earning over half a million dollars a year in addition!
We know all of this will have inspired many future engineers!