Five Minutes with Chelsie Reddin

Our state-of-the-art solutions need excellent engineers to develop them. One way we make sure that we always have talented and innovating engineers on board, is through our graduate scheme. We checked in with Graduate Electronics Engineer, Chelsie Reddin to find out more about her role at SEA.  

Could you tell us a bit more about what you do? 

A bit of everything, but my main priority is creating schematic designs and printed circuit board (PCB) layouts. At the moment, I’m working a lot on compliance, so making sure our products meet customer needs, and EU and UK regulations. I enjoy the problem-solving aspect of it, when I’m working on a board and it’s not working as it should, I try something new and it starts to work, that’s really satisfying.  

It took me a while to feel confident in my abilities, as I work with such knowledgeable people, but they helped me see that I can provide value and give a different perspective. The Electronics Engineering team is very friendly and always happy to support, which helped me feel confident with jumping in and helping out. 

And how does that work within the defence industry? 

When going into defence, there’s a lot of things I never considered. Environmental conditions where our products operate can be different, but also the lifespan of a product needs to be 20/30 years or even longer, so you need to consider that. As we work in the maritime sector, you also need to consider things like the impact of salt water on various materials. 

We’re starting to see a lot more uncrewed autonomous vessels, so we need to adapt and make sure our solutions are available to integrate with those. We're making sure we offer solutions to our customer’s challenges that don’t necessarily require people pushing buttons, so that we adapt to the industry. 

How does being a graduate at SEA work? 

Through a post on LinkedIn, I arranged a conversation with the Emerging Talent Team, but I wasn’t able to attend the main intake day. The company arranged for one with just me and another person, and both of us ended up joining. It was a great experience. 

Now I feel like I’m a part of the team, I work alongside a lot of experienced people and learn what everyone’s doing and how they interact. I’ve learned a lot about communication and documentation. When making a change, you need to be able to communicate that to the rest of the team, you can’t go rogue! Sometimes, there’s also some negotiation needed, you need to find a balance between what the company wants, what the customer wants and what’s feasible. It’s also important to document changes, as people down the line need to know what’s been done, and why we did it in the first place. 

What advice would you give to others interested in engineering? 

Get your hands dirty and ask people questions, you can start to pick up a lot that may become useful later. For example, my family works on the production side of things, so I know how it works from their perspective, and I can apply that in my work.  

I did my GSCEs in Engineering, and a degree in Electrical Engineering afterwards, but you don’t need all that as long as you have a basic understanding of maths and physics, and you need to like fixing things. Apprenticeships are also a great way to go if you don’t necessarily want to go to university. 

Thank you, Chelsie 

You can learn more about our Emerging Talent Scheme here.