Engineer a Career

Martin left school in fifth year with no Highers. His mechanic apprenticeship ended when the business went into liquidation, and he spent years working in a kitchen working out what to do with his life. Then his brother pointed him towards a CAD course at college.That NC led to an HNC, then an HND, then a job at a small structural startup and a move into civils at Aecom. Today he’s a Senior Civil Designer and Senior Digital Delivery Specialist at Burns.In this episode we talk about:Getting into engineering through college with no technical backgroundDealing with imposter syndrome when you first join industryWhy you should never stop asking questionsAutoCAD, Revit and Civil 3D explained simplyWhy BIM is really about information management, not just modellingWhat AI means for graduates, and why knowledge still has to pass from person to personBuilding a network early and keeping in touch with the people you studied withIf you’re a student, an apprentice, a parent or a teacher, this episode shows there’s more than one way into engineering.Interested in a career in engineering? Check out our partners:AECOM: https://aecom.com/careers/graduates-and-early-careers/uk-ireland/Farrans Construction: https://www.farrans.com/graduates/Scottish Power: https://www.scottishpower.com/people_careers/careers/graduate_programmesSiemens Energy: https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/home/careers/early-career-programs.htmlTaylor and Fraser: https://taylorandfraser.comWatch on YouTube: youtube.com/@EngineeracareerFollow Engineer a CareerLinkedIn: @engineeracareerInstagram: @engineeracareerTikTok: @engineer.a.careerYouTube: @engineeracareerWebsite: www.engineeracareer.co.uk

Danny never planned on being an engineer. He wanted to be a footballer, got pointed at engineering by a maths teacher, was knocked back from mechanical at Strathclyde, and was rejected from around 40 internship applications before SSE said yes. Three years out of university he is now working on HVDC control and protection at Hitachi Energy’s new Glasgow office, on the technology connecting offshore wind to the grid, with what he reckons is 50 years of work ahead of it.In this episode Danny takes us from Inverness to Glasgow: a five year integrated masters in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde, two summer internships with SSEN Transmission split between the National HVDC Centre in Cumbernauld and the Inverness office, a graduate role in power systems modelling at AECOM where he was put in front of clients from day one, and the move to Hitachi Energy. He spent six months in Sweden on factory system testing, tracing faults between software and hardware before a control and protection system shipped to site, and he explains in plain terms what HVDC actually is and why it is creating thousands of jobs around the world.Along the way we get into why university taught him how to learn rather than what to learn, why he applied for anything that interested him in the slightest, the role models who shaped him including a dad who spent his career building affordable housing in the Highlands, and the advice he would give his first year self: talk to people, treat them as friends rather than a network, and relax a bit more. Unless you are in final year, in which case relax a bit less.If you are a student wondering whether you are good enough, Danny’s line is worth remembering. A company is not going to take you on if they cannot support you as a graduate.Whether you are studying electrical or mechanical engineering, chasing your first internship, or trying to work out where the energy transition fits in your career, this one is for you.Follow Engineer a Career -LinkedIn: @engineeracareerInstagram: @engineeracareerTikTok: @engineer.a.careerYouTube: @engineeracareerWebsite: www.engineeracareer.co.uk

Engineering should be a career that everyone can see themselves in, girls and boys, women and men. Right now, it isn’t. Women make up just 17% of the UK’s engineering and technology workforce.In this solo episode, Josh looks at where girls and women are lost to engineering, from the subjects they choose at school to the careers they leave. He also explains why industry has to show up much earlier, and much more consistently, if we want a workforce that reflects the people it serves.Josh doesn’t claim to have all the answers. He wants to hear what he’s missing, and this won’t be the last episode on this subject.Sources and further readingEngineeringUK, Women in engineering and technology (2026): https://www.engineeringuk.com/research-and-insights/our-research-reports/women-in-engineering-and-technology/EngineeringUK, Women in engineering dashboard (April 2026): https://www.engineeringuk.com/media/2rshp0g3/dashboard-women-in-engineering-engineeringuk-april-26.pdfEngineeringUK, infographic references, including the 2023 Science Education Tracker: https://www.engineeringuk.com/research-and-insights/infographic-references/Royal Academy of Engineering, Closing the engineering gender pay gap (2020): https://raeng.org.uk/policy-and-resources/d-i-resources/gender-pay-gapASPIRES research, UCL: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/research-projects/2017/mar/aspires-researchWomen’s Engineering Society: https://www.wes.org.ukEquate Scotland: https://equatescotland.org.ukEqual Engineers: https://equalengineers.com

In episode 69, Hayyaan joins Josh to share how great tech teachers and a school Lego club sparked his interest in engineering, why one open day settled his choice of degree, and what it was like learning anatomy at Ninewells Hospital and sitting at the controls of a Da Vinci surgical robot.They talk about founding Dundee's first biomedical engineering society, becoming a J.P. Morgan tech brand ambassador through LinkedIn, and the AFBE conference where Hayyaan met engineers who looked like him for the first time. That moment led to the Embed project, a summer school for over 100 students from China, and three years running AFBE's Next Gen programme.Now finishing a Masters in Global Health at the University of Glasgow, Hayyaan's dissertation looks at AI diagnostic systems claiming 100% accuracy while being tested on the wrong people. It raises a question every engineer should ask: who are we actually designing for?If you're a worried student wondering what to do beyond your degree, or someone who thinks engineering means a hard hat and hi vis, this one is for you.__Linkshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/hayyaanrbashir https://www.engineeracareer.co.uk

Episode 68 of the Engineer a Career Podcast, with Josh joined by TJ Scott, a Formula One engineer and fellow Glasgow Caledonian University alumnus.TJ grew up building fast, unlikely cars with his dad in the family workshop. That was where he first asked how you take something that works and design it properly on paper before cutting any metal. School didn't go to plan. His route through education ran through City of Glasgow College, two difficult years at Strathclyde, and a fresh start in first year at GCU, where he stayed through to his masters.At GCU he helped found GCU Racing, the university's first Formula Student team. He talks through starting it in 2019 and keeping it alive through COVID from his bedroom. The team restarted in 2023 with a store room, an old welder and five weeks to build a car before Silverstone. During powertrain design judging that week, a judge from Mercedes picked him out, and he went straight to a final interview.TJ joined Mercedes High Performance Powertrains as a graduate in 2024. Within months he was designing oil pump internals, and he went on to work on the hybrid system under the new 2026 regulations. The conversation covers what Formula Student teaches beyond engineering and why industry keeps hunting for ten years of experience instead of growing it. TJ also explains why he gave up his chance to drive the car so the team could run without him. His advice to students in any year is simple: find the society that is building something, and get stuck in.A conversation about false starts, sideways moves, and what happens when capability finally gets seen.

Professor Weijia Yuan, who is part of the University of Strathclyde's Applied Superconductivity Laboratory, joins Josh again to explain how superconducting cables can already replace copper in the grid at a fraction of the volume, why the real barrier isn't the technology but the economics, and where the UK could build a manufacturing capability rather than just watch this happen elsewhere.This is Episode 2 of the Superconducting Machines & Systems series with the University of Strathclyde, UKAEA and Engineer a Career.

Professor Weijia Yuan, who is part of the University of Strathclyde's Applied Superconductivity Laboratory, joins Josh to explain how superconducting magnets, not the fusion reaction itself, are becoming fusion energy's hardest engineering problem, and why the next decade could see the first real fusion electricity hit the grid.This is Episode one of the Superconducting Machines & Systems series with the University of Strathclyde, UKAEA and Engineer a Career.

Every engineer's instinct is to chase efficiency: more power, better shapes, cleaner numbers. Adarsh Bhardwaj thinks that instinct is exactly what's holding the renewables sector back.In this special episode, Josh is joined by Adarsh, an engineer turned entrepreneur and founder of Regeno, the deep tech startup building a plug-and-play wind turbine that can be installed and maintained without a specialist team. From Formula One dreams to Rolls-Royce to raising serious investment, Adarsh shares why practicality beats performance, how logistics and deployment quietly kill renewable projects, and what he learned about backing yourself as a founder.A conversation for anyone in engineering who has ever wondered whether the real bottleneck isn't the technology at all.Follow Engineer a Career -LinkedIn: @engineeracareerInstagram: @engineeracareerTikTok: @engineer.a.careerYouTube: @engineeracareerWebsite: www.engineeracareer.co.uk

Josh sat down with Ryan to talk through his journey from the wee computer guy fixing the school projector to co-founding an AI advisory business, and how a career in software engineering shaped the way he now thinks about the biggest question in the industry.What stands out about Ryan's story is that the through-line was never really the code. It was the problem solving. From jailbreaking his iPod as a kid to building a Where's Wally clone in Visual Basic at school, the instinct was always the same. He got exposed to programming in fourth year of high school, fell in love with it, and never looked back.From there it built brick by brick. A placement year at BT that meant driving down to Ipswich in a beat up car for the assessment centre and living alone in a studio flat at twenty. Four and a half years at a startup where he was thrust into cloud infrastructure and told to make it happen. Then the audit world, and eventually founding Adastra with his co-founder Dan a few months ago.The heart of the conversation is a claim worth sitting with. A developer's job was never to write code. It was to solve a problem. It just so happened you had to write the code by hand to do it. Ryan makes the case that AI does not threaten that job, it sharpens it, and he reaches for the tractor and the arrival of animation software to explain why the fear of a new tool rarely matches what happens next.He is candid about the gap he sees in businesses right now. Everyone feels like an expert engineer overnight, but few understand the security, the scalability, or how to verify the thing actually works. His advice to students is the same thing he has said for years. Go build something, deploy it to the cloud, put it out in the world, because barely anyone can claim that and it is the real differentiator.The conversation also gets into why "we must use AI" is the wrong place for any business to start, why the younger generation's lack of preconceived ideas may be their biggest advantage, and why becoming literate in AI is the vocabulary of the future.If you are a student wondering how to stand out, a graduate weighing up the job market, or an engineering director trying to build an AI strategy, this is an honest conversation about solving problems and building a career without waiting to be picked.Follow Engineer a Career LinkedIn: @engineeracareer Instagram: @engineeracareer TikTok: @engineer.a.career YouTube: @engineeracareer Website: www.engineeracareer.co.uk

Applications open in weeks. The people who get the internships, placements and graduate roles are the ones who are ready before they do.In the last of four episodes for the new academic year, Josh shares what he'd tell any engineering student or graduate going after a jobTreat getting the job like a module and give it time every week. Build a base CV and tailor it to every role. Get in early, because some companies hire as applications come in and close when they're full. Josh is honest about a process he thinks is flawed: early-career recruitment is problematic, and it pushes too many good students to the back of the queue. He can't get you a job. But he can help you build towards one and these are the steps he'd take.Ready. Steady. Go.