Career Bite: Pathways to Engineering

Our final ‘Career Bite’ of the term, ‘University to a Multi-National Engineering Corporation: Pathways in Engineering’ took place on Thursday 11^th March.

Dr Jon Allin, Chief Technology Officer at Permasense Ltd (part of Emerson Electric Corporation) delivered a brilliant virtual talk to our Sixth Form students about the numerous career pathways in Engineering and how to choose and navigate them.

Jon has had a varied career in engineering starting with electronics, then into a mechanical engineering degree. After a time in industry, he went back to university to do a PhD, followed by a few years as a software developer. He then started his own company engineering high-tech wireless sensors to monitor corrosion. Jon now leads a team of 40 engineers including mechanical, electronic, and systems engineers, software developers and data scientists.

Based on his own experiences, Jon talked about possible pathways through an engineering career and gave some great advice about accessing Engineering courses at university. He also covered being a specialist vs a generalist and touched on many of the specialisations available as well as the qualities required to be an Engineer.

Jon’s talk was followed by a very lively Q&A expanding on some of the points he had covered. Thank you so much to Jon for his time and being such a great Career Bite speaker and to all the students and parents who attended for their insightful questions.