Emissions and Test Technology Engineer Review

I'm still doing my placement - 5 more months to go. So far it's been a great journey. I feel happy surprisingly don't hate Mondays.

Basically, there's no distinction between full-time engineers and placements students in my department. I'm given real work & responsibilities and my colleagues rely on me.

My manager is really supportive and his door is always open for me. He's extremely busy but he's always willing to provide me with additional support. It's not a rare case for him to sit down with me and help me establish path for the project...even sometimes he's guiding me through equations and concepts.

Usually I'm very busy and time flies quick. The essence of the position requires to host contractors on site which takes time. Also the environment is really dynamic and we need to support other departments.

I've been given surprisingly large amount of responsibilities - from budget handling to managing whole projects on my own.

The real engineering environment is very different to the university work so I developed a set of skills, which Universities generally overlook. However, I might already forgotten couple of purely academic chapters (like Fourier transforms for example)

The atmosphere is really friendly and supportive. No micro-management & pressure are imposed.

In general the organization is pretty good and well-structured. However, the beginning offered a very steep learning curve with not very much training. I was learning on the job...but this then helped me to develop confidence.

Several training courses were arranged later during the placement, which provided me with thorough understanding.

I'd be more than happy to be back. The package for graduates is very appealing and competitive.

Although we're scattered around the area the atmosphere was great and I met lots of good guys.

I lived in Daventry, where the cost of the accommodation is acceptable, offering good value for money. Availability might be a bit of an issue though. .

Night life offers pretty poor opportunities - only 3 night clubs in town, which are not great. However, Northampton is pretty close and offers more.

It's alright - gym + swimming pool in town centre. Also some event organized by the company