Systems Engineer Review

Brilliant company to have on your CV. One of the top engineering companies in the world. A lot of the work you get involved in is great, it's really cutting edge technology and you know that the work you are given is work that is actually needed not just a project your manager has made up. The work you get involved in actually contributes towards the final product. I worked with Submarines which is a pretty cool thing to say, every day you walk past the submarines in all stages of their build process and you know that what you're doing help contributes towards building our nations subs.

When you're given work your colleagues are quite happy for you to just crack on with it. They're there should you need any help but they trust you to be able to work on your own. It isn't like school or uni where you can be spoon fed the answers you are a lot more independent and there is a certain amount or responsibility that they expect from you. It was good to know that they trusted you and were happy for you to do your job.

The management team you enter into is called Early Careers. They are really good at looking after you, ensuring that you have the best possible support throughout your time here. They actually care about you as a person as well not just an employee, giving you support that extends outside of work as well. They are here to help you progress so they invest a lot of time and money in your development putting you on different courses and providing you with extra training.

Every day is different. There are numerous days where you will just sit and have nothing to do whether because your manager hasn't given you any work or you're just waiting on other people. The good thing about being part of the early careers community is that you can take up things called 'stretch assignments'. These are additional extra projects you can take on that help you gain extra competencies. Often these involve doing some sort of STEM activity in various different schools or putting on events.

Due to the nature of the Submarines business you obviously can't have a huge responsibility for anything significant as we don't have the experience or the knowledge. To be given something significant to be responsible for would be pretty daft anyway as you would come under a lot of stress and it wouldn't be right. This is actually a good thing, you get to see some of the projects going on and work with those who are responsible for the projects so you know you've always got someone who knows if what you're doing is right and they're always there to help should anything go wrong.

As previously mentioned having BAE on your CV is a brilliant thing to have. Some of the work I was involved in required programming and this helped develop my programming skills which will be useful for when I return to uni. On top of the training and the work I did a lot of this year is about making contacts within the business. BAE is huge, Submarines is only one part of the whole of BAE Systems and so we were able to get the chance to meet others from different business units which was brilliant as some of the people I've met could well end up becoming future leaders of their respective functions. This year was definitely about developing myself, the great thing about the scheme you're put on allows you a lot of freedom. You can move around different areas of the subs business every couple of months to gain different experience in different areas of the company, again helping you make new contacts, and just providing you with different skills.

The office atmosphere wherever you're located is pretty friendly. As long as you make the effort with your team they're happy to have a chat with you or help you out with anything. My office was buzzing most of the time which was a nice environment to work in.

This placement scheme ties in the the grad scheme that they also offer and so they've been doing this for years. It's pretty well organised, you have several different contacts L&D manager, your Placement manager and your functional manager so you have a lot of support and people helping sort out work and placements for you.

The company invest a lot of time in training you up. In their eyes you are the future leaders and workers that they want to have. They want to give you the skills needed in order to progress as quickly as you can so that in turn the company can grow. I was on a training course at least every month which was a nice break from sitting at a desk all day as well.

Like I've said, they invest a lot of time in you and they really want you here. It's somewhere that if you work hard you can quite easily progress as well. There is no ceiling, if you want you can be the next MD, that's one of the things the current MD said on our first day. It's somewhere I'd be happy to work at.

As placement students we're treated like fellow graduates and trainees. There are about 60/70 new early careers starters every year and so there's a huge amount of people you can socialise with. It's a nice thing to be able to walk round and see someone you know in a similar position to you almost everywhere you go. Almost like being back at uni.

I worked in Barrow-In-Furness for 6 months which is in the north and rent and food is very cheap. I also worked down near Farnborough for 6 months which was the opposite, pretty expensive to live.

Down in Farnborough was pretty good and you're not too far from London. In Barrow there's not a huge amount but Ulverston and Lancaster etc. aren't too far away if you wanted a big night out.

There's lots of STEM stuff you can get involved in. We put on some events for schools one of which was sponsored by the ImechE. There are also events such as the K2B that BAE sponsor and they're always looking for people to help out with that.