It's International Women in Engineering Day 2026 and this year we are so excited to introduce our guest Jessica Gagen.

Jessica is an aerospace sales engineer at Gulfstream Aerospace, a Miss England and Miss World UK winner, and one of the most visible STEM advocates in the country. Her route into engineering didn't follow a straight line, it went through a modeling career, a supermarket shelf, a physics resit at 23, and a pageant stage in front of cameras from 112 countries. But every step of it made her the engineer she is today.

In this episode, Jessica talks about why she chose engineering after reverse-engineering the careers of global CEOs on LinkedIn, what it actually means to be a sales engineer, and how skills from modeling and pageantry translate directly into high-pressure technical environments. She also shares her honest take on what holds young people back from engineering and what visibility really means when you're the first engineer to win Miss England.

Whether you're a student trying to make sense of where your degree could take you, or someone who still thinks engineering means overalls and a lathe, this one is for you.

Josh sits down with Mamta Singhal MBE, who found her calling early, taking apart plugs and mechanisms as a child long before she knew the word "engineer."

Inspired by James Dyson and a Tom Hanks film about a toy designer, she set herself a single goal: to engineer the things that make children smile. She studied product design engineering at Glasgow University and the Glasgow School of Art, landed a graduate placement at Dyson, and at 23 was working at Hasbro on Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Action Man.

In this episode, Mamta takes Josh through a career spanning Hasbro, Coca-Cola and Mattel, and into her incoming role as Vice President of the IET. She talks about form and function as inseparable, the importance of company culture over title, and why she's never had a plan B.

The conversation moves into the territory that drives her now: getting more women into engineering and keeping them there, the role of male allies, mentorship as a duty rather than a favour, and her new venture, the Top Percent Club, supporting senior women navigating the altitude at the top of the profession.

Mamta is honest about the failures behind the awards, the Hoover rejection before the Dyson job, the dozens of knockbacks for every success and makes the case that engineering needs less stereotypical engineers, not more of the same.

A genuinely inspiring conversation about purpose, resilience, and leaving a legacy.

What does it actually take to build a career in engineering when the path is anything but straight?In this episode, Josh sits down with Susan Ipri-Brown, immediate past president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, one of the oldest engineering institutions in the world. From a grandfather who never doubted she'd follow him into the profession, to internships at General Motors, to teaching, to leading ASME, to starting her own company, Susan's "squiggly line" is a masterclass in adaptability.We get into the gap between what universities produce and what industry needs, why students underestimate the story they've already built, and how knowing your capabilities, including the ones you don't yet have, changes the way you grow. Susan also makes the case for professional societies as a place to lead before your job lets you, and reflects on what mentorship really looks like across a career.A genuinely transatlantic conversation on workforce development, self-awareness, and why engineering is, at its heart, about possibility.

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Paul is an independent consultant working at the nexus of public and private heat networks, having most recently spent five years at Vattenfall and, before that, a long career at Whitby Bird and Ramboll.His route in started early, a grandfather he knew as an engineer without ever learning what he did, an uncle's stories over slabs of Irn Bru, a laser lab in Liverpool, and a week of work experience on a harbour build that showed him the scale and impact of real infrastructure. A gap-year CAD job became a general engineering degree at Cambridge, which became geotechnics almost by chance when Whitby Bird won the BBC Broadcasting House project, which eventually became energy, and then heat networks, the only thing he does now.In this episode, we explore what a non-linear engineering career actually looks like from the inside why exposure matters more than knowing exactly where you'll end up, how the mentors who gave him space to learn and fail shaped everything, and why he went from "total skeptic" of district heating to total advocate. We talk about the Scotland Heat Map he helped build, the economic case for backing young engineers early, and what it really takes to move from doing the engineering to leading the people who do it. We also get into chartership why he failed the first time, why he deserved to, and what the second attempt taught him, plus his belief that the future of heat lies in coordinated regional energy companies rather than 32 organisations repeating the same lessons.This is an honest conversation for students and early career engineers wondering how a career builds when you stay open to the pivot have a spark, keep feeding it, and be careful not to overfeed it.

Connect with Paul Steen on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulsteen

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Episode 50. Two years, 56 guests.

There's no straight line into engineering.

In this milestone solo episode, recorded at the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS), Josh shares the four things 49 conversations have taught him about how people actually build careers in engineering, why the routes in matter far less than what you do once you're there, and why there's never been a more important time to back young people into this industry.

Josh also joined by Kirsty Pinnell, who leads the internship programme at NMIS, to talk about what a real route into industry looks like in practice.

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National Manufacturing Institute Scotland - https://www.nmis.scot

NMIS Internship 2026 Programme -https://www.nmis.scot/work-with-us/careers/internship/

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Tobias is a renewable energy engineer, founder of Embodied, and one of the most layered guests we've had on the podcast.

His career has taken him from Germany to Sweden, the United States, China, Norway and now Scotland — through solar cell research at Fraunhofer, hydrogen compressor development, and into his own boutique engineering consultancy. But the most interesting part of his story isn't the geography. It's the mindset.

In this conversation, Tobias and Josh get into why most jobs are never advertised, and why Tobias made a decision to never apply for a role again. They talk about the shift from negotiating for a job to laying out what you contribute, and how serendipity, openness and existing relationships have shaped every step of his career. From there the conversation moves into why "energy sovereignty" is a more useful frame than net zero, the embodied emissions hiding inside the renewables industry, and what it actually takes to bring engineering teams together around a shared cause. They close on how self-discovery, mindfulness and bio-inspired thinking are changing how Tobias designs.

If you're a student or graduate engineer who's tired of the application treadmill, or an engineering leader thinking about how your teams really work, there's something in this one for you.

Jack Chalkley joins The Engineer a Career Podcast to share what a career in construction actually looks like from the inside and how a project director gets built one project at a time.Jack is a Project Director and Scotland Healthcare Lead at AECOM, where he leads multidisciplinary delivery across some of the country's most complex social infrastructure projects. His route in wasn't planned, a builder sketching extension drawings on his parents' kitchen table sparked an interest in architecture, which became construction management at GCU, which became a trainee role at Clark Contracts running his own projects before he'd even graduated. Fifty projects later, he moved to AECOM and progressed from Project Manager to Project Director in under five years.In this episode, we explore what it really means to build a career in construction why placements change everything, how contracting sets you up for consultancy, and what it takes to lead client conversations when you're decades younger than the people in the room. We talk about the Golden Jubilee surgical centre and why healthcare projects keep him passionate, the mentors who shaped his progression, and why "be a sponge" is still his core advice years into the job. We also get into the contractor-to-consultancy shift, what good project management actually looks like, and why there's no single path through this industry.This is an honest conversation for students and early career engineers wondering what construction careers really involve and how far you can go when you stop worrying about your age and start owning the work.

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Josh sat down with Josh Murchie to talk through his journey into aerospace engineering and how he ended up working at GE Aerospace Caledonian in Prestwick.

What stands out about Josh's story is that it isn't a straight line. At 17, he made it to the final stage of the GE apprenticeship he'd dreamed of since doing work experience there as a school pupil and didn't get it.

From there, it became a process of pivoting, applying again, and finding a different route in: a foundation apprenticeship in aeronautical engineering, a first-class degree at the University of the West of Scotland, a Master's at the University of Glasgow (the same university that had rejected him for undergrad), and eventually a direct-entry role at GE Aerospace, without going through a graduate scheme.

This conversation challenges the idea that there is one route into engineering. Josh talks openly about the rejections that shaped his path, the imposter syndrome that came with each new step, and why he believes the most valuable thing his education gave him wasn't technical knowledge but the ability to think and problem solve.

They also explore what a New Product Introduction Engineer actually does, the value of bringing an academic perspective into a workplace built on apprenticeship trained expertise, and why Josh believes the next few years will be the heydays of aerospace and aviation.

If you've been rejected from an apprenticeship, didn't get the grades you wanted, or are questioning whether your route into engineering is the "right" one, this episode offers a different perspective on what a career in engineering can look like.

There's no wrong path.

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