Graduate Hardware Engineer Review

Good rate of learning, many opportunities, and excellent support from team members. However, IT systems aren't the best, many outages and glitches means you'll end up spending a long time with IT support to resolve issues. Food that the canteen serves is not great and is very expensive. Salary and salary progression is not good compared to other companies, and benefits are lacklustre. However, aside from all that, the work you do is rewarding, you learn so much through the diverse projects that the company carries out. And support is great, making any experience from this company a great foundation to a successful career in Engineering.

Due to the sheer number of projects, you can potentially experience the full engineering lifecycle which is amazing and definitely not something you'll be able to experience elsewhere. Engineering is not all about designing, prototyping, building, and delivering products, instead there is a lot of paperwork, especially for an aerospace and defence company with safety-critical products, you will experience certification, safety/industry standard compliant planning and development, also a lot of checking and reviewing. Working here will change your outlook on engineering. Working here will improve your standards of work, both in terms of quality and refinement. You will make fewer mistakes, and will constantly think about potential issues in designs and ways to mitigate them safely if they were to occur.

Low salary and terrible salary increments, making it very difficult to handle the cost of living in the areas around the office. Due to this, most grads are living at home with their parents, or living an insanely long way away and commuting. Benefits are mostly all salary sacrifice with very high costs, not great when salaries are low. Pension scheme is decent, but pretty much on par with a lot of other companies. Other companies are much better in this respect.

Competency requirements are clearly set out for engineering role progression, and line managers are mostly supportive to find ways/project openings to fit you such that you can meet those targets. The company carries out countless projects, and each project has different ways of working (in a good way), allowing you to gain a lot of experience whilst being at the same company.

Support is excellent. We are given a general buddy for non-project specific things, a project-specific buddy, a supervisor, a team lead, and line managers are fantastic. We are also given the opportunity to apply for a corporate mentor, where you fill in a form to outline your interest, goals, etc, and the HR team pair you with a manager/director level employee to mentor you which is amazing.

Work life balance is great, 37 hour weeks gives you a lot of flexibility. However, there is the option to work overtime, while it is not forced upon you, you have the choice to take it if the project supports it.

Yes

Yes. You probably won't learn as much at other companies.

The recruitment process was transparent and rapid, despite having a lot of stages. HR/Graduate and Early Careers team (GART) are fantastic with this. I applied to many jobs, BAE Systems was the role I thought I wouldn't get as I thought I wasn't good enough. However, the interview process made me realise my skills. BAE Systems were the quickest compared to the other companies I applied to who all had shorter interview stages.