Seeing the Big Picture

The 29-year-old was born and raised in Kongsberg, but has lived outside the city during studies. She has always planned to move back home when the time was right, and now she is finally back in the city of her heart, with her boyfriend and a Cocker spaniel puppy on the load.

For the past two years, she has worked as a systems engineer and technical lead at Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace.

Industrial Master’s degree – a golden opportunity

With a fairly narrow and specific Bachelor's degree in underwater technology from the University of Bergen, Ingeborg wanted a broader and more applicable Master's degree, which would give her a greater scope for work opportunities.

The combination of heavy technical expertise and broad methodological system knowledge, in addition to specialization in industrial economics, proved beneficial and not least relevant to the job she has today. Industrial economics is a subject that combines technology, economics and administration.

Many of the system engineers she works with are recruited through the Industrial Master's course. The most common is probably the 50/50 variant, where you study and work in a relevant industrial company at least half of the time.

But Ingeborg was a full-time student and really enjoyed it. She particularly liked the combination of engineering and economic subjects, and project collaboration across the two student groups. She loves travelling, and took advantage of the opportunity for an exchange semester at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia.

The department she works in consists of both newbies and seniors, a well-functioning combination. Ingeborg absorbs learning from the knowledgeable seniors. Many of the "heavy" seniors are highly capable software developers, and have built their system expertise through experience. Several of these choose to build on formal competence within Systems Engineering by choosing individual subjects that are relevant to their job.

Trust and responsibility

The project she is currently working on is in the industrialization phase, which means that they are developing a new production system to prepare a product for serial production. Ingeborg has many different tasks, and her organizational skills come in handy.

She works both as a system engineer and system architect, and is responsible for both finance and administrative tasks in the project. She is also technical manager, or what is internally called "job package manager" for the systems group and the hardware group, where she is responsible for teams that can consist of anything from 10 to 20 people. She was trusted with this responsibility after just a few months.

“Although it was a bit scary to be thrown into it, I feel enormous trust and that they have faith in me, and that is a very good feeling,” she says carefully.

But modesty notwithstanding – the girl has proven that she can and that she wants to, thus the opportunities come. Now she has been nominated as a candidate for the group's leadership program "Leadership essentials" in order to further develop her leadership skills. That is impressive after only working a couple of years in the company.

Although she greatly appreciates the trust, and enjoys both to lead and being led, it is important for her to keep her technical competence up to date. Therefore, she uses the opportunity to take some practical courses, to ensure that she can also participate in the production technical work and keep the understanding of the subject.

No day is the same

A working day can consist of many different tasks and you rarely find Ingeborg in her office for an entire day. She can be in the lab making prototypes, soldering, crimping and checking that things work, or sitting in front of the screen, modelling and creating system designs, or participating in meetings with subcontractors and reviewing requirement documentation and production documents.

In the management role, she coordinates meetings, works on budgeting, reporting and follow-up of the project, and sometimes she supporting the production.

“I have a lot of contact and interaction with colleagues from various disciplines, and often meet new people every day. In my role, it is therefore important that you enjoy collaboration and the people around you, but you can also take part in shaping your own working day,” she says.

Although she hopes that the products they make never will come to use, she finds peace in knowing that this is high-tech and world-class, with precision and safety as the leading factors.