Khan Hooi.

Hailing from Adelaide, my current role is as a Performance Engineer at Qantas in Sydney, Australia. I have First Class Honours in Mechatronic Engineering, and a Bachelor in Computer Science. I love bikes with and without motors, I’m training for a half marathon, and I’m learning the guitar.

Qantas

In September 2016, I moved away from family, friends and the city I love, all because I had been offered a role in Qantas. I have always wanted to work in aviation in some capacity. In fact, I started university studying Aerospace Engineering, but soon changed thinking that there would be no jobs in Aviation! So when I first worked at Qantas, for 3 months as an Intern in 2014, I was over the moon. Two years on, and I am now working on the next flight planning system, a hugely significant project. I have learned a huge amount of both domain and technical knowledge, whilst working in a great department. One unexpected pleasure has been the camaraderie within my team (7 people, we call ourselves the Thunderbirds), and also the challenges of working with the large and diverse project team (30+ with vendors).

Gerard Lighting

I started at Gerard pretty much straight out of uni. I was working in Diginet, a brand of Gerard Lighting which was in the buisiness of lighting control. Diginet acted like a well-funded startup. We were creating brand new products, RAPIX, from a clean slate. The work was complex and fascinating. The team was fantastic. They sprinted like a finely tuned agile machine. They worked hard, hammered out innovation and had fun doing it. I learned so much from Clive, Mark, Darren and George about coding skill, discipline, innovation, and not taking yourself too seriously. I wish I could have stayed with them longer.

University

University life was fantastic. I learned a huge amount across a wide spectrum of engineering, from mechanical engineering disciplines such as thermodynamics and stress analysis, to electrical and electronic engineering to finally software engineering, where we programmed in assembly, implemented image recognition algorithms and analyed sentence structures in Harry Potter books. The wide variety of my studies has given me a broad understanding, and kept me motivated and passionate for learning whilst at uni. Uni was great for other things too. I met my best friends at uni, fought against climate change, and really found a passion through the cycling club.