Even though many of our graduates will have progressed in their careers since completing a case study, they are still of interest to students who wish to gain an understanding of the world of work.

Design / Certification of wing structure for new aircraft variants

- Authoring or approving wing component stress dossiers in conformance with EASA CS25 requirements.
- Managing suppliers in a technical capacity eg. low RF resolution
- If working closer to the manufacturing side of the business, then trips to the build lines in North Wales, Toulouse, Hamburg, Bremen, Madrid, etc... may be required.
- Depending on the phase in an aircraft development, testing may be required from small tests of fasteners or individual components up to whole aircraft static and fatigue tests.

Developing solutions to complex problems

Managing customer expectations / aggressive delivery timescales

- Relevant to my degree
- Interesting product

Stress analysis - hand calculations
FEM analysis - Hyperworks, Nastran, Abaqus
Simple VBA programming
Excel, Mathcad, Word, Powerpoint

MSc Mechanical Engineering Design- Manchester University 2005 - 2006

Sitec (Agusta-Westland / Rolls Royce / Airbus) 2007 - 2011
Sitec is a contract company who provide engineers to the major Aerospace companies in the South West. I worked on EH101 helicopters in a design and stress capacity, Rolls Royce engine components and Airbus A330/340 fatigue and damage tolerance analysis.

Airbus 2011 - now
Since joining Airbus I have worked as a stress engineer on the A380, A350 and A320/A321/A319 programmes.

Senior Stress Engineer / Aircraft Architect at Airbus

Big company graduate schemes are not the 'be-all and end-all'. There are many smaller companies who work on behalf of the larger firms, working on the same products, with more variety and often better pay.

Graduate schemes offer a good, structured and often fast-tracked route into a company, but perhaps have more of a management rather than engineering flavour.

If you are really passionate about performing analysis and being close to the product you are working with, a smaller design-build firm would be more suitable. If you are looking to work on big, high profile projects and are willing to be one part of a big team then the big companies would be more suitable.

There is a recent proliferation of 'small' start-up companies (e.g. Space-X) which are looking to recruit highly motivated young engineers - don't overlook these firms as they potentially have the highest rewards / job satisfaction

Don't become too focused on finding what you think is your perfect job, for the perfect company. Your opinion of what you want and the direction you want your career to go in will almost certainly change once you start working and progressing your career.