How I found my home in engineering

How did you get into the Merchant Navy?  

After finishing school, I trained as an engineer by doing a Higher National Diploma in electronic engineering). Then I joined the Merchant Navy which is a non-military but uniformed service. I served as a radio/electrotechnical officer maintaining and operating radio and radar equipment on various large cargo and passenger vessels. I had many memorable experiences during this time, including dealing with a serious engine room fire on a super tanker, working with Royal Navy escort vessels whilst transiting the Gulf, and battling through a typhoon in the South China Sea. 

Why did you move into meteorology?  

 After leaving the sea, I joined HM Coastguard (Maritime and Coastguard Agency - MCA) as a watch officer, co-ordinating search and rescue activities around the East Anglian coast. But I'd always had a keen interest in meteorology. I self-studied for an 'O' level in Meteorology at school, and was a volunteer met observer both whilst at sea and with the MCA.  

Can you tell us about your time with the Met Office?  

In my late 30s I applied to join the Met Office as a forecaster, and to my great surprise was successful. I enjoyed forecasting for our customers, especially the Army Air Corps at Wattisham, and I worked with some great people. However, I was eventually drawn back to engineering, and I had the opportunity to combine meteorology with engineering. This seemed like the perfect combination to me. I'd also picked up new skills in Python programming along with learning about sensors and dataloggers that we use in our observations network now. 

During my time with the Met Office, I've been fortunate to work in the in Operational Meteorology, Weather Science and Engineering teams. This has included being in the Marine section, looking after Ocean Data Acquisition System (ODAS) offshore data buoys. I’ve also worked as a scientific software engineer, helping to develop our next generation model post processing suite. I’ve found working in different areas of the organisation to be hugely beneficial for my development.  

What do you do in your current role?  

Now I’m a senior engineer within our Observations Research and Development (R&D) team. My work revolves around maintaining our surface weather sensors and data logger capture systems. Recently I had the opportunity to design and implement three large observing systems for our Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) service, currently operating at the National Physical Laboratory. I also had the opportunity to redesign the systems that collects and processes solar radiation data at key UK sites. This involved integrating new hardware and updating software along with developing a way for users to visualise the data remotely. I also produce automated data dashboards and plots for a variety of research sites. Its satisfying to be able to develop a system all the way from the sensor data collection in the field to the desktop visualisation component.  

What do you like about working in engineering with the Met Office? 

As a Met Office engineer, I see myself as a person who can help apply our scientific research into the outside world, using a combination of hardware, electronic and software skills. There is plenty of variety within this area of the organisation, with opportunities to work on anything from radars to offshore data buoys, and in different locations. Doing my current role allows me to combine all the skills and experience I've built up so far in meteorology, engineering and science to solve problems. I’m very happy working in engineering with the Met Office – I definitely feel at home.  

This article was published in September 2025.