Tell us about your path to Northrop Grumman. How did you get hired here?
A few of my classmates from undergrad at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) were Northrop Grumman interns. At the time, I did not know much about the company, so during the 2019 National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) conference, I stopped by the Northrop Grumman booth to learn more about the company. One of the recruiters was interested in my resume and set up an interview where I got an overview of what engineers do at Northrop Grumman, which happened to align with my interests and specialization.
What do you do at Northrop Grumman?
I work as a systems engineer in the Pathways Program. The Pathways Program exposes young engineers to different branches of the company such as manufacturing, systems, and aerospace just to name a few. It provides opportunities to rotate around the company and explore what other departments do to make Northrop Grumman successful. At the end of the three-year rotational program, the engineers generally have a better understanding of how their strengths and unique skill sets can effectively support the growth and continued success of Northrop Grumman.
A day in the life of a systems engineer at Northrop Grumman varies depending on your team and project. On the program I support, my tasks include, but are not limited to working with my team to answer client’s questions concerning the proper procedure to install or remove a component from an aircraft, addressing potential anomalies in an aircraft’s specifications, and explaining issues that may arise on an aircraft.
Has there been a defining moment in your time at Northrop Grumman?
I had the opportunity to work on temperature analysis data to support one of our customers. I performed temperature analysis to identify if the temperature anomaly has changed, progressed, or worsened since the last data analysis. Doing so allows the customer to better assess the performance of the aircraft. If the anomaly had worsened, then the aircraft is no longer fit for daily operations and would be pulled from the fleet for more in depth analysis and maintenance.
Thanks to this, I have been exposed to different components of an aircraft and how they function together as a whole. I have also been exposed to internal software and tools used to track different types of data in flights.
How is working at Northrop Grumman “personal” or “purposeful” to you?
Working at Northrop Grumman is helping me become the engineer that I aspire to be. I like to analyze data and solve problems. I completed my master’s in industrial and systems engineering from Morgan State University in 2019. While in the program, the majority of the courses I took were statistics related. Working at Northrop Grumman exposes me to new challenges every day and pushes me to explore potential solutions that are outside of my comfort zone.
How have you seen science, technology and engineering intersect?
Working at Northrop Grumman has given me the opportunity to experience the inter-relationship between science, technology and engineering in numerous ways. My primary responsibility on the program has been the study and collection of temperatures, analysis of the data, and finally making an informed decision based on my analysis. The inter-relationship of science, technology, and engineering can be observed through the study of nature by recording different temperatures at different conditions, using technology to analyze the collected data, and finally engineering with the informed decision made at the end of the analysis.
Northrop Grumman systems engineers are Defining Possible every day. Click to search our systems engineer job openings and apply today.
Return to Life at Northrop Grumman home page.