My name is Craig, and in my early teens, I wanted to be an Architect but found my calling in my late teens as an Engineering apprentice for a Diesel Injector manufacturing company, learning how to operate and programme manual and CNC machines such as centre lathes and milling machines. I spent my apprentice years providing first-line maintenance to production machines and working closely with production engineers to solve engineering problems.

After my apprenticeship, I studied Mechanical Engineering at USW, completing the course with a dissertation on the feasibility of modifying an existing manual torque station to measure the compression of the components experienced inside a diesel injector. I used Solidworks to produce a 3D model to complete a Finite Element Analysis, as well as completing the physical analysis on equipment in the facility I completed my apprenticeship. I spent a short period as a Product Support Engineer within the rail industry for a company who overhauled train bogies where I put my 3D modelling and Engineering skills to good use.

I soon made the jump into the defence industry where I spent three years learning Integrated Logistic Support (ILS) as an ILS Engineer, mainly in the area of Supportability and Reliability on Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I) equipment. I moved over to CDS Defence & Security in 2019 and worked as a Senior ILS Engineer for 4 years before moving to Principal Engineer, leading the Support Systems team a year ago. I enjoy the variety of work on equipment and projects across the sea, land, air and space domains with a great team of skilful and knowledgeable Engineers.