What led you to your current role as Product Manager at Teledyne e2v Space Imaging?

I have been with Teledyne for eight years now, after joining the company’s graduate scheme. Prior to that, I completed my Bachelor's degree in Physics, followed by my Master's in Astronautics and Space Engineering. After finishing my studies, I was looking for somewhere where I could work in the space industry and gain some meaningful experience. The graduate scheme was a two-year programme which allowed me to experience different areas of the business, all within the space imaging division.

My main 'home' placement was in the materials engineering team, but I also did other placements in central technical services, where I got to work in specialist labs on lots of different products and projects. Another placement was spent in the bids and applications engineering team. There, I experienced my first interactions with customers. After the two years, I became a fully-fledged materials engineer, working my way up to materials engineering team leader.

What did you do as materials engineering team leader?

I oversaw a small team carrying out research and development on new materials, parts and processes that we could use in our manufacturing. We were also called in to look at unexpected issues on the line and non-conformances to work out why something went wrong. While no-one wants anything to go wrong in manufacturing, it was actually a really interesting area to work on. You learn a lot about the product that way.

Then, by the end of 2019, I was appointed as team leader for the assembly and test team - a much bigger team of around 30 operations staff. Up until that point, I'd been in engineering, so this was a great chance for me to see the operations side of the business as well. The operations team works in the clean rooms over three shifts, 24 hours a day. It allowed me to get much closer to the individual products and interact with the people who were actually building them day in, day out.

How did the COVID-19 pandemic impact your work?

When COVID-19 first hit in March 2020, I was working on a lot of scanning type products for medical applications. Our main market is space imaging, but we also do a lot of work in the scientific and medical sectors. We provide components for things like medical scanning units and scanning electron microscopes. We stayed open for the whole lockdown period and my team and I were on site every day so we could continue to work uninterrupted.

What was particularly noteworthy from that period was our involvement in a scanning system designed to detect COVID-19 in patients. Our detectors were installed in scanners designed to identify the disease in people by assessing temperatures and looking for other tell-tale symptoms. That was very interesting for me from an operations point of view because it was all about hitting weekly targets and working under pressure. Getting our products out the door so that our customers could build them into their units and help stop the spread of COVID-19. It made me feel proud that we were making a direct contribution to the fight the spread of the disease at what was an unsettling time for so many.

After COVID-19, you moved into a different role once again, overseeing product technology and verification. Tell me about that.

After my stint as assembly and test team leader, I went on to become head of product technology and verification for a while. This was one of three distinct engineering areas and I had several senior engineers and team leaders directly reporting to me, each of whom ran their own smaller team.

I also oversaw our environmental lab in Chelmsford. This is where we do all the environmental testing for our products. We must make sure that everything we ship out to customers can withstand being installed inside a space rocket and being launched into space. They will experience huge vibrational and shock forces within that process. They are also tested for humidity tolerance and temperature cycling. This is a big one for us, as you see huge temperature fluctuations in space, depending on where you're pointing your camera - directly at the sun or out into deep space.

More and more, we're moving into larger subsystems. We want to deliver more substantial subsystems and front-end electronics. We therefore need to test the software that goes with it to be able to sell it as a product. I ran that team too. Our verification engineers are a crucial part of the project team. They are charged with verifying that everything about the devices work how they're expected to, and so they tend to be involved in every part of the engineering and testing lifecycle.

So, I ran these teams until July 2022, after which I took a sabbatical for six months. It seemed to be the right stage in my life for me to do that and Teledyne was incredibly supportive of me. I travelled the world, visiting 24 different countries and got to experience so many amazing things.

Then, when I was ready to come home again, I was fortunate enough to be able to come straight back into a new job at Teledyne. During my absence, there had been a management restructure in the engineering division. However, I had a discussion with senior management, who told me that an opportunity had just opened up for someone to head up one of our product streams as a Product Manager. So, I started in that role in February 2023 and have been enjoying it ever since.

You have stayed with the same company and same sector for quite some time now. What is it about working in space technology that appeals so much to you?

Three things, really. Firstly, you get to work on some really interesting projects and products that are destined to go into space. There’s nothing quite like that. When I see reports of space missions in the news, I know that I have worked on them, building parts and helping with design. Now, they are up in space, taking pictures of the earth and planets and sending back vital imaging information. If we ever discover other planets that are similar to Earth, which I’m hopeful that we will do one day, it will be done with imaging sensors that will have almost certainly been built and developed at a company like Teledyne.

Secondly, it is all about the exciting technology that I get to work with. In the space industry, you're always trying to improve on what has been done before. This gives those who work in it a great chance to constantly be learning and growing in our own knowledge and skills. We can become masters of our craft. At the same time, we are always being faced with intriguing new challenges and new things to learn. From a day-to-day perspective, that really keeps me motivated.

Finally, there is a close-knit community within the space imaging arena that really supports each other and is very welcoming to newcomers who are eager to learn. We take pride in our own and other people’s achievements and everyone is on the same page in that sense.

Due to growth across Teledyne Space Imaging there are currently a number of exciting vacancies?

Teledyne Space Imaging continues to grow and this is partly due to the growing commercial space market that is offering exciting new opportunities for people to play their part. For Teledyne, we have previously focused on a business-to-agency business model, supplying our products to big space agencies around the world like ESA, NASA or the Italian or Japanese space agencies. Now, though, we are looking at developing relationships with commercial entities, which come with plenty of new opportunities. Current vacancies in our team include an opening for another Product Manager. ​​