By: Edson Da’Silva
Graduate Engineer, Communication Systems

31st May 2017

I’m Edson Da’Silva and I’m a graduate engineer here at Plextek. I joined the company in September 2016 and it’s been a fantastic start to working life. I’ve met so many great people and I’ve been working on a good number of interesting projects, which have been beyond what I ever expected to do. So here is my view of a working day as a graduate at Plextek.

As with every engineer, my day starts with coffee (it appears we can’t function without it), then once the caffeine has kicked in I prioritise my day’s work; due to the demands of a consultancy, prioritisation changes day to day so it’s important to refocus this daily.

On a normal week, I can be doing anything from assisting clients with technical enquiries, to co-writing project proposals and typing up any relevant documents. I’m involved in many aspects of Plextek’s client service, which I really enjoy; however, a majority of my work is hardware design and testing. Occasionally, I get involved with software design and mechanical prototyping as well. It’s great to get involved in so many aspects, as I get to experience other areas of product development, which I ordinarily wouldn’t be exposed to.

The starting point for most hardware designs is a simulation. This might include testing and simulating the frequency response of a circuit. As for the circuit design, I am responsible for putting together the schematic diagram of the circuit, which gets passed over to the PCB team for the layout and manufacturing.

Depending on the nature of the project, I occasionally get involved with some aspects of mechanical prototyping. For example, the project may have a PCB that will be exposed to extreme weather conditions and will require a protective enclosure for it. My role would be to conduct some testing of materials in the lab and pull a concept together for testing purposes. Once we have proven that the concept is suitable and the whole system works well in the enclosure, I work with the mechanical design team to fully implement it into the product so that it is ready for manufacture.

Sometimes software is required to test the functionality of a hardware design, and I occasionally get to write it myself, which enables me to gain further experience and grow my skillset. While I haven’t done much software design yet, packages, such as “Visual Studios”, are very powerful and flexible, allowing for small test programmes as well as large software packages to be built using the same tools.

At any given moment, the projects I work on can focus on a wide variety of different tasks. On a busy day, I can be working on up to three completely different projects. Whilst that can be challenging at times, since joining Plextek, I have improved my ability to effectively distribute my time between projects. I also enjoy switching between projects and tasks, as it gives me some time to pull away from a problem and come back to it later with a different approach.

An integral part of being a Graduate Engineer at Plextek is the internal engineering training program. The in-house training scheme incorporates teachings from Plextek’s most experienced members and practical tasks that look to provide training across all areas of the business. So in between project work and other tasks, I try to get on with some of those activities too.

Because the work can be so varied, it is not uncommon for me to come across a piece of technology I am not familiar with. In my mind, it’s all part of the learning curve and I often do my own research when I get home so I can learn a little more about the subject area. An important aspect of being an Electronics Engineer is to continuously progress and learn as technology evolves.

What I enjoy most about being a Graduate Engineer at Plextek is that since joining, every single project I have worked on has been fascinating. The variety of the work, and the challenge of climbing a new learning curve with every new project, makes every day an exciting prospective. A big part of being a graduate engineer is the creative way in which you tackle a hardware, software or mechanical problem. I will often work as part of a team, so we can bounce ideas off each other and come up with inventive ways to solve a problem or design a prototype for example, and although it can be challenging at times, it is always a rewarding experience.

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