March is National Engineering Month in Canada – an opportunity to showcase the exciting opportunities that a career in engineering has to offer. We are proud to employ some of the best and brightest in the industry in Calgary, Halifax, and Ottawa and will be highlighting them throughout the month. 

Meet Emeka, a Solution Manager working on our Evolve-to-Open program in Calgary.

1. Tell us what led to your current role in engineering? 

As Solution Manager for the Evolve-to-Open program, I sit on the customer interfacing team, primarily responsible for creating the solution vision, laying out a solution roadmap, and prioritizing technical capabilities that allow our team to design, build, and deliver the United Kingdom’s next generation tactical communication system.

In 2020, I was one of 18 General Dynamics Mission Systems employees selected to participate in the Systems Engineering Architectural Leadership (SEAL) Program. It was an amazing experience which afforded me valuable leadership opportunities, including serving as the Deputy Solution Manager. After just three months, I was asked to take over as Solution Manager when the person in that role transitioned to another role within the program.

2. What is the most challenging aspect of your role?

An instrumental aspect of my role is to communicate the priority of work to our customers, our system engineering team, our user experience team, and our three Agile Release Trains who all happen to be dispersed across multiple time zones covering Canada and the UK. This involves constant negotiation with the customer, system engineers, business owners, product managers, and architects. Because everyone has different needs, negotiating common ground is the most challenging aspect of my role. It requires time, patience, empathy, and diligence. Although challenging, it is also the most satisfying, especially when a mutually beneficial agreement can be reached.

3. Why do you think engineering is important to our company and our customers?

Our company designs innovative solutions using advanced cutting-edge technology to build hardware and software systems that keep our customers safe on land, in the air, under the sea, in space, and in the cyber domain. None of this is possible without engineering. Our customers, and our company, understand how important engineering is to solving both today’s and tomorrow’s problems and to keeping us ahead of the competition.

4. What’s the one piece of advice you would offer an aspiring engineer?

Be passionate about what you do. But first, truly understand what you do, why you’re doing it, and for whom you’re doing it for. Once you understand those things, and really believe in them, being passionate should come naturally.