Sadie Peacock

"I think my personality types (coordinator, influencer, manager) really help me in my job role. Often with engineering problems there are so many ideas and tests that we need to do to understand the situation fully, that coordinating and managing these in an effective way is often key to identifying the solution! "

"Starting salary for a process improvement engineer is £27,000 I work for a company which manufactures optical measuring equipment. My role is to improve the processes used to build and test the products supplied to customers. Because we make a large range of complex products in reasonably low volumes (on average less than 1000 of each product each month) much of the work is done by people using tools and fixtures (instead of a continuous production line using machinery like in automotive manufacture).It is the job of the process improvement engineers to support this assembly process. This involves investigating any defects found within the process, using data analysis and hands on investigation. In my role as a Senior engineer I manage the team, helping to prioritise workload, allocating people to tasks, and providing advice to ensure the team’s targets are met. "

"All throughout school I had no idea what sort of job I wanted to do. I had always enjoyed Maths and Science, but didn’t really have a career path in mind. The A levels I picked were my favourite subjects (Maths, Physics and Biology) and when it came to deciding on my university degree I chose to study Physics at The University of Manchester, purely through process of elimination! After graduating, I was exploring my options, when I came across the process improvement engineer role, For me it was the perfect mix of hands on and analysis work and the products I would be supporting looked complex enough to satisfy the scientist in me! 6 years later and I'm still here! "

"I like to spend my free time doing a broad range of activities. I spend some of my time volunteering to help the engineering community (e.g. I am a STEM ambassador) and to keep fit I regularly go indoor bouldering and occasionally surf and ski. I also enjoy learning new things so read a lot of non-fiction text and take evening Spanish classes. They’ve been very useful when I’ve been travelling! "

"I typically have a few short meetings with senior members of the organisation and my team to review the objectives for the day and to understand what the priorities are, making sure that they are clear to everyone.Most of my day will spent reviewing technical reports, discussing the outcome and suggestions for next steps with my team members, attending working sessions to progress projects and investigations, ensuring everything is on track and providing guidance to my team and stepping in to lead where necessary.The rest of my day is usually spent working on my own projects, strategic planning and data analysis to support any new project proposals"

"A Levels: Maths (A*) Biology (A*) Physics (A) Physics BSc at the University of Manchester "