How important is quality in your department?

As a business, we are known for quality. We tend to work with the same customers for long periods of time. We typically get orders that run over many months or even years. A lot of it what we do is around charge-coupled devices (CCD), which is very much our heritage and an area of business that is still growing incrementally. We are also thriving in other areas of space technology, which shows that we are flexible enough to be able to expand in multiple directions at once.

One thing that all the products have in common is quality. Quality is key and reliability is fundamental. If a customer is going to install one of our devices on a satellite, launch it into space and expect it to survive a very long journey, it has to be of very high quality and extremely robust. So, we have set up our manufacturing processes to ensure that our products will survive and function as required until the end of the lifetime of the satellite or mission.

How do you run the Operations Department here at Teledyne Space Imaging?

We aim to be extremely organised. Ours is different from many other manufacturing lines, such as car parts or consumer factory products, due to the lower volumes involved. However, it all goes back to quality. We must pay careful attention to each of the manufacturing steps that are required. Many products can take up to 12 months from start to finish.

When it comes to running the actual site, we have our amazing facilities team that supports the infrastructure around our manufacturing areas. Then, our brilliant equipment engineering team are actually responsible for running our manufacturing equipment and keeping it well-maintained and functioning safely. Maintenance is a big focus overall for us, as it is keeps the production lines running smoothly and helps us ensure that our manufacturing equipment can run as much as possible all the time.

What is your approach when it comes to recruitment at Teledyne Space Imaging?

We are seeing a lot of growth in our business and sales right now. We are seeing demand for people of all ages with compatible skills to come and join our team. From our side, we are working to become as agile as possible when it comes to the make-up of our workforce. People move around in their careers a lot more now than they used to. So, we need to ensure that new recruits get up to speed with what they need to do quickly. We must support people in transferring knowledge to ensure that it stays within the company in the long-term.

We are active in working with outreach programs around STEM and science in schools, which is great. We've also got a thriving apprenticeship scheme that's been going for years and years. Another element that we have been looking at from a pilot project point of view is inviting graduate students or undergrad students to do summer placements with us, with a view to that being part of the pipeline for recruitment when they graduate.

Added to that, we attend recruitment fairs to allow people to find out who we are and talk to us directly about our products and employment opportunities. That has worked really well, and we intend to do more of that so that local people understand more about what goes on at Teledyne.

Where do you see the future for Teledyne Space Imaging?

Despite there being some challenges ahead, I think it's a very positive outlook for us. The growing demand that we are seeing in the space sector around Earth Observation and Low-Earth orbit satellites means that customers will need really good imaging sensors like ours. Plus, we are working on moving up the value chain in other ways.

For example, not just providing the imaging sensor itself, but having input into larger applications and products such as cameras and telescope optics as well. Customers will increasingly be able to work with the different divisions within Teledyne to create a fully-bespoke, complete solution, all within one single Teledyne contract. Our global presence can really help us with that. While we are American-owned, we have sites in many different countries too, which give us plenty of opportunities worldwide. That is a really exciting prospect for us and our long-term development. ​