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The vast majority of our team at the Thales Australia West Leederville office in Perth are Software Engineers. In amongst them is Taylor Odishoo, a Graduate new starter who holds a degree in mechatronics. Get to know Taylor here.

Born and raised in Perth in Western Australia, Taylor freely describes herself as a straight-A student who never put a foot out of line during her schooling years. Contrary to what most engineers will tell you though, her main interests in school weren’t maths and science.

“My main drawcards were the humanities,” she smiles. “I loved subjects like economics and history. In fact, my plan once I left school was to do a double degree in Economics, but within the first year of university I decided it really wasn’t for me.”

In the meantime, Taylor had undertaken some short tutorials on coding and was enjoying it, so she transferred out of economics and into engineering; completing a degree in mechatronics. 

“In my first year of engineering at university I got involved in the , based around Formula 1 racing,” she says. “It was really exciting and although it was tough to keep up between my studies, I didn’t mind. I loved it and I felt like I learnt a lot more in the program over the year than I would have in a classroom.”

The program left such an impact on Taylor that she considered moving into motorsport when she graduated, but with opportunities few and far between in Australia, she decided to look elsewhere.

“A lot of engineers here in Western Australia graduate and then go into oil and gas or the mining industry,” she notes. “But I really wanted to help people, so I decided to pursue either medicine or defence. And that’s how I found Thales.”

Welcome to Thales

Taylor graduated from university and was accepted into Thales’s Graduate Program midway through 2019. With her degree in mechatronics, she says she was a little nervous walking into a room full of software experts.

“I was definitely nervous being the only one there with a mechatronics background,” she laughs. “It was daunting at first, but everyone made me feel so welcome right from day one and my degree actually got me placed on a really exciting project as soon as I started here – Stingrae.”

Stingrae is an evidence collection and situational awareness system developed with the Royal Australian Navy that uses mobile, wearable and wireless technologies to transfer voice, video, images and text between one or more boarding teams and their base ship.

“When I started, my managers thought my mechatronics background might be useful on the Stingrae project,” Taylor notes. “So, they showed me what it is and does, then asked me to get to work on a new purpose-built camera. At the time we were using an off-the-shelf camera, but to do these types of operations it needs to be a very specific design.

“It had to be incredibly robust, not just because it is out in the open and at sea, but we needed to consider all the bumps and knocks it may take during handling and the operations themselves. Plus, it needed to be capable of live streaming via Bluetooth as well as Wi-Fi to reduce the chances the footage wouldn’t transmit when the Wi-Fi wasn’t optimal. And most importantly, we needed to ensure the battery life would last the duration of operations.” 

Taylor commenced work on the camera and implemented all of the customer’s requirements; even improving the battery life by 500 percent; ensuring the camera could spend more time in the field. 

“It’s been a surreal experience working on this project,” Taylor says. “You have moments where you doubt yourself and if it will go anywhere, but then when you see the positive reactions you get when the customer sees what you’re doing, it’s very rewarding. I’m really proud of where we’ve been able to take this in such a short space of time. Right now, I have ten of the cameras sitting on my desk ready to be used by the customer. That’s pretty exciting.”

Recently, Taylor has also branched out to work on another project called “Orion” – a situational awareness capability as well as a few other programs that the team in West Leederville are developing.

“I love working here,” she smiles. “The people are great, it feels like a family. The culture is incredible, which is really important in a workplace. Plus, the work is extremely interesting. What more can you ask for?”

Taylor’s Top Tip for New Graduates

“My advice is to really throw yourself into it all. Try to take it all in, and learn as much as you can from the people you work with. Always take up any opportunities thrown your way and just go for it!”