Danny never planned on being an engineer. He wanted to be a footballer, got pointed at engineering by a maths teacher, was knocked back from mechanical at Strathclyde, and was rejected from around 40 internship applications before SSE said yes. Three years out of university he is now working on HVDC control and protection at Hitachi Energy’s new Glasgow office, on the technology connecting offshore wind to the grid, with what he reckons is 50 years of work ahead of it.

In this episode Danny takes us from Inverness to Glasgow: a five year integrated masters in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde, two summer internships with SSEN Transmission split between the National HVDC Centre in Cumbernauld and the Inverness office, a graduate role in power systems modelling at AECOM where he was put in front of clients from day one, and the move to Hitachi Energy. He spent six months in Sweden on factory system testing, tracing faults between software and hardware before a control and protection system shipped to site, and he explains in plain terms what HVDC actually is and why it is creating thousands of jobs around the world.

Along the way we get into why university taught him how to learn rather than what to learn, why he applied for anything that interested him in the slightest, the role models who shaped him including a dad who spent his career building affordable housing in the Highlands, and the advice he would give his first year self: talk to people, treat them as friends rather than a network, and relax a bit more. Unless you are in final year, in which case relax a bit less.

If you are a student wondering whether you are good enough, Danny’s line is worth remembering. A company is not going to take you on if they cannot support you as a graduate.

Whether you are studying electrical or mechanical engineering, chasing your first internship, or trying to work out where the energy transition fits in your career, this one is for you.

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