Adam Wright
Published: Thu 27 Apr 2023
Adam Wright works as Director of Engineering Simulation & Technical services where his day-to-day role involves everything from establishing a Simulation Centre of Excellence to connecting with clients and colleagues across the globe.
Adam’s career in STEM started with a university placement whilst studying for his BEng and quickly grew into a successful career. After leaving university and securing a position at Caterpillar, supporting manufacturing engineering, Adam moved into a new company where he learnt new skills in both engineering and leadership.
“After a few years, my remit was expanded to included global technical services, which is essentially the scientific and engineering analysis groups. I’m mostly making decisions on key issues or helping influence engineering opportunities, problems, or strategies.”
Adam Wright, 39, Director of Engineering Simulation and Technical Services at Sensata Technologies
Although based in Northern Ireland, Adam needs to interact with people across the globe and having an internationally recognised title helps validate his competence and experience whether it be China, India or America.
“The IET credentials have opened conversations, especially internationally, about what it means to be Professionally Registered.”
Building confidence
Although Adam’s career has seen him achieve success, it wasn’t always guaranteed, or even expected. Naturally curious as a child Adam often used to find himself breaking things in order to see how they worked, often to the annoyance of his parents.
“To be fair to my parents, they were quite entertaining of my curiosity and my dad taught me a lot about woodwork, electrics, and vehicle mechanics. I was inspired by my dad’s interests and fascinated by stories of science and engineering.”
Adam’s passion for STEM lay dormant, until university when Adam began to realise the potential he had and the possibility of a good career. Some doubts were still apparent.
“How I thought and felt about many topics were often unconventional or controversial and fuelled hesitation since childhood of what ‘someone like me’ from a Country Antrim town scorched by ‘The Troubles’, with a thick accent and who hadn’t left the country, could do.”
However, Adam is vocal about his challenges and believes that is the key to being in “the right place to learn and develop even more”.
Achieving success
Despite working on valuable engineering projects and innovations as well as becoming a leader, Adam still had a particular, but familiar, barrier to overcome before applying for CEng.
“The biggest hurdle for me reaching CEng was my own confidence and self-belief. I still had that niggle that there was something ‘special’ about people who had titles.”
Once he started the process of applying for CEng and speaking with a Professional Registration Advisor, Adam quickly realised that he had the skills and knowledge he needed and was able to draw upon meaningful experiences to demonstrate his competence.
“The CEng application process is supported with extensive guidance alongside the UK Spec and support from advisors, it helped me realise I was making good progress as an engineer.”
After submitting his application Adam was awarded CEng status and immediately set to work on seeing how he could use the confidence boost to help the engineering community.
Giving back
Soon after successfully being awarded CEng Adam decided to volunteer as a Professional Registration Advisor (PRA) and is helping the next generation of engineers and technicians achieve their Professional Registration goals by “verifying the evidence provided is satisfactory relative to the UK-SPEC.”
“I am successful when I enable other people to be successful. As an engineering leader, I thrive on helping others reach their potential, cope with change, solve problems, and discover themselves.”
Adam, who also chairs the IET Quality Assurance Committee, takes his volunteering role seriously and believes that talking with a PRA can be extremely beneficial for potential applicants as the “quality of applications that have engaged with a PRA is distinct.”
After attending the Registration & Standards Conference in 2023 Adam reflected on how being involved with the IET helps him build connections and manage his development.
“Involvement in the IET continues to be rewarding for me as well as allowing me to add value and influence to the engineering community and the IET itself. As well as connecting with other professionals, access to events and learning materials, keeping abreast of technology and trends through IET news & publications – being a member of the IET allows me to manage that all under one umbrella”.
Upon looking back at his engineering journey to date, Adam is extremely proud of what he has achieved and what he can enable others to achieve as well.
Asked how he would sum up his feelings towards his role in the engineering community and as a leader, Adam simply said “I am an ambassador for the profession in all I do”.