Emma Haynes

While at school I was heavily into the Performing Arts. Playing multiple instruments to an advanced level, I also did a lot of dance and circus. 

My school subjects were Music, German, Maths A, English, Biology and Physics. 

I didn’t know what I wanted to do after high school, so I tried studying psychology through an arts degree (which only lasted 6 months). After looking through a QTAC pamphlet, I stumbled across a degree called Mechatronic Engineering. Enrolling into engineering went against all common sense (engineers need to be good at maths, and I was not). After two semesters of epic failure leading to an academic warning, I was caught in a conflicting position (enjoying the subjects but doing poorly on the grades). I had some difficult choices to make - drop out of uni or learn how to focus and study. After much effort and a few small setbacks, I graduated uni in 2014 with Honours (good grades) and a Graduate Engineering job at Boeing Defence Australia.

Over my time at Boeing (2015 to current), I have worked on two projects, with the opportunity to move around within the project to gain exposure. My first project was Currawong, a new communications system for the Australian Military. Over this I worked in both the Field Hardware team and the Mission System Software Development team. On my current project, I have worked in both the Mission System team and the Ground Station Team. I am now the Technical Lead Engineer of the Ground Station.

This job designs, develops, integrates, and then verifies a ground-based cockpit. A ground station is an aeroplane cockpit that is on the ground, for autonomous aircraft.

Firstly, the customer provides “engineering requirements” which is their way of saying what they want/need the product to be.

The Techinical Lead Engineer then takes the requirements and comes up with a design. The design needs to cover everything, including: aesthetics, hardware, electrical, and software.

Then, the Engineer and thier team start building the design. They learn along the way and make changes to the original design as they go.

When all the different bits of design start to get put together, the integration starts. This is where they have to make sure all the pieces of the puzzle fit together…it doesn’t matter how good one aspect is if it can’t work with the other bits of the product. And then finally, the product is verified. This is the test to see if the final product does everything the customer asked for in the beginning.