What is involved in your job?

As Project Lead Engineer, I am responsible for overseeing all technical activity associated with delivering custom projects to our clients and internal teams. I work closely with the project managers to define what needs to be done on the project, as well as being the prime technical contact for our customers. It’s all about providing technical direction to ensure our products meet the standards that have been set upon us.

Who makes up a typical project team?

A typical project will have around four or five core members, who will stay with the project for its duration. These include the project manager, project lead engineer, product assurance engineer and a verification and test engineer. As the project moves through different stages, we also pull in people from different departments to add their input as needed.

For example, when we are designing the sensor, we will have specialist designers allocated to our team. They will be heavily involved throughout the design phase, but when that comes to an end, they will move on to another project. It is the same for the manufacturing phase and so on.

Are you working on anything that might have appeared in the press recently?

In the past, I have worked on a number of projects that have received extensive media coverage. For example, I was Project Manager for our work on the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) satellites, the first of which was launched into space in December 2022. We delivered a custom sensor for this important satellite, which was built to revolutionise our approach to weather forecasting and significantly improve the accuracy of longer-term weather predictions.

Since 2019 I have been involved in developing a sensor with integrated optical elements for the CO2M mission. CO2M is one of Europe's Copernicus Sentinel Expansion missions that will monitor human sources of carbon dioxide in order to hold governments to account to their emissions targets set out​ in the Paris Accord. I have also worked on the assembly of the focal plane arrays for PLATO – the space telescope due to be launched by ESA in 2026.

Tell me what makes Teledyne Space Imaging’s technology stand out from the crowd?

There are image sensors everywhere these days – in our mobile phones, cameras etc. Teledyne Space Imaging makes very bespoke, high-end versions of these for high performing applications including those in the international space sector. We are well-known for our quality and all the leading space agencies come to us for image sensors in the visible range. Teledyne Space Imaging are also becoming more involved in other technologies, such as infrared through collaborations with other Teledyne businesses in the USA.

We make highly customised sensors, both from a performance point of view but also in the way they are packaged to meet customers’ needs for the electrical, mechanical and thermal interfaces. Our customers are making highly sensitive, bespoke instruments, so our designs have to fit in with that very precisely. We offer a lot of characterisation and testing too, so that our customers fully understand how the sensors work, what information they are sensing and how the scientific data can be extracted from them.

For space projects our sensors are built specifically to survive the robust and hostile environment of space, where there can be high levels of radiation and extreme temperatures. That’s after the sensors are subjected to the launch of the satellite itself, which can be a pretty violent activity. They must be mechanically robust so they don’t shake apart as they go up into space.

We also work with other customers involved in ground-based astronomy and they, too, need to be confident that the sensors we provide are high-performing and fit for purpose. It’s that commitment to high performance and customisation, backed up by decades of experience working successfully in the field that our customers have come to rely on us to provide.

What are the different types of sensors that you offer?

We have two main imaging sensors in the visible range that we work on with customers. One is a charge-coupled device, or a CCD, which is quite an old technology now, but still produces very good imaging data. However, over the past ten years, we have been moving more into CMOS technology (complementary metal oxide semiconductor), which integrates more of the electronics onto the sensor.

This is a more complex type of sensor, so we are working on developing standard products in this area, rather than there being quite so much customisation involved for each project. There are several types of CMOS sensors in the product family which we are working on. One is the TDI CMOS sensor (time delay integration), which is largely used for Earth observation. We have several contracts involving this technology underway at present and there is also a lot of interest around future projects among our customers.

Who else does Teledyne Space Imaging work with besides the main agencies?

We are increasingly working with new companies and start-ups in the commercial space arena. This is a growing market for us. They are keen to adopt a more agile approach to their work than the prime contractors and agencies with whom we have worked for a long time. They demand more from us around tighter schedules and reduced cost but are happy to take a standard product without any customisaton.

What skills do you need to do your job?

My own background to the job was through a degree in physics and astronomy. This gave me both a passion for working in space and strong technical knowledge, both of which are vital for working in my role and for progressing in the space sector. I have a broad range of knowledge that covers all kinds of areas from the mechanical and thermal side to optical and electrical. This has hugely helped in my role and in understanding the different engineering and scientific elements, as well as working with the subject matter experts.

Having an interest in technical matters and knowing what information you need and where to get it from also really helps. Problem-solving abilities are also key, as is a genuine love for the products we work on. We have many people at Teledyne Space Imaging who have worked at the company for decades. I think that what keeps them at the company is pride in the type of projects and applications that our products are used for. The ‘pretty pictures’ that we get from highly sophisticated telescopes and satellites are made possible by there being one or more of our sensors on board.

We are growing as a company, and I am seeing a diverse array of skills in the job descriptions and recruitment messaging coming through. In my job role, we are seeing more external candidates who are bringing with them skills such as system engineering and technical management experience. All of these things really help keep our projects on track and help us stay at the top of our game.

What do you enjoy most about working in the space sector?

You are at the forefront of expanding human knowledge in key scientific areas. That’s pretty exciting. Anticipating the end application and knowing what that product will ultimately deliver makes all our hard work developing the sensors worthwhile. Knowing that there are not many other people out there doing what we do is also a big motivation for me.

Looking ahead, what do you think the future looks like for Teledyne Space Imaging?

There is definitely a conscious move towards combining our knowledge across the whole Teledyne group so we can offer our customers a broader range of products and expertise. We have recently been working with colleagues from the USA to deliver world-leading infrared technology into the European market. More of that type of collaboration across Teledyne will help us strengthen our offering globally, not just for the sensors themselves, but for the electronics systems around them.