National Engineering Day with Joel Brooker
November 5th is National Engineering Day in the UK. Every year, we come together to celebrate the incredible talent we have at Saab UK within a range of engineering disciplines: from our software engineers within Public Safety & Security, aerospace engineers in BlueBear - A Saab Company, integration engineers that work in Saab Seaeye, field service engineers within Training and Simulation, and I&V engineers within Sensor Systems.
To celebrate National Engineering Day, we spoke to Joel Brooker, Systems Engineer within Sensor Systems, about his career journey and what today symbolises for him. Joel joined us at Saab UK in January, after graduating in 2023 with an Aerospace Engineering degree from Coventry University.
What inspired you to pursue systems engineering, and how did your journey begin?
I knew I wanted to do engineering when I was five or six. And by the time I was in my early teens, pre-GCSE, I was obsessed with aircrafts and the mechanics around it, so I knew I'd do aerospace engineering. I did placements almost every summer since I was about 15, either working with the RAF or at Airbus or working on private jets as a mechanic. So, when I went to university, I'd always been able to hold my own, but never be top in any single discipline. And that's sort of how I ended up doing systems engineering, because you need to be able to sit across almost every field of engineering!
What does a typical day look like for you as a mechanical engineer?
We jump around a lot depending on the projects. But it can include doing data processing in Excel/MATLAB, reviewing requirements, working with I&V and Mechanical/Electrical to meet requirements and planning testing. This can also include supporting I&V in their work as well.
I also work with Sales to provide support to customer with knowledge about the systems, and what we can do to meet their requirements, alongside writing bid documents from the engineering side.
What drew you to work at Saab UK, and how does your role contribute to keeping people and society safe?
I think what drew me in was, it was very clear that there's a lot of hats you would have to wear. You have to get involved in everything, which for me is game on, really! From there, you can build everything out, and have an increased level of responsibility the way I wouldn't have had before.
I get to learn huge amount from a lot of people, and very quickly, which I enjoy. I think probably the big part of keeping people and society safe is you can see our products in action - we can see when we're out testing, we can see with the customer, and you can see the immediate impacts.
Why do you think it’s important to celebrate National Engineering Day, and what message would you share with aspiring engineers?
I think it’s important to celebrate engineers in all areas. I think the more traditional, mechanical, electrical engineers get a bit more of the attention, but people often forget about our ILS team, our training teams, our production team and field repairs too – we’re working as a team to get the whole product together.
My advice for aspiring engineers would be to just keep going and enjoying it, because it is fun!
