ON THE TOPIC OF | SKILLS
With an array of
top awards to
show for what is
still a relatively
short career in
engineering, Orla
Murphy of Jaguar
Land Rover shows
no sign of losing
any of her passion
for the profession,
as Paul Fanning
reports.
When you ask engineers
how they got into
the profession, they
often suggest that
their career path was virtually preordained,
giving every impression
of never having really thought of
pursuing any other path than the one
dictated by their vocation.
Recently promoted to Software
Change Robustness Manager at
Jaguar Land Rover, Orla Murphy’s
story isn’t quite like that. Raised the
daughter of Cork dairy farmers, she
showed an early talent for maths and
physics, but also for music. Only when
she took part in the BT Young Scientist
Competition at the RDS, Dublin and
won best overall maths, physics and
chemistry project, did her future
career come into sharper focus.
“Engineering wasn’t on my radar,”
she says. “It was not visible to me or
something I had really considered…
All I know is that I didn’t have any
exposure to the possibilities of an
engineering career until very late on
in my teens.”
The change came when she
found out about a degree course in
Electronic Engineering with Music at
Glasgow University. “They described
the degree as one third physics, one
third maths and one third music. It
seemed like it was made for me,” she
says. From here, she went on to do
her master’s before taking internships
first with BT and then with Jaguar
Land Rover.
SQTU A LRITY
“When I went for the internship,”
she says, “I told them ‘I’m not a car
person. I don’t love cars, but I know
that sound, music and acoustics are
going to be very important areas
within cars and that’s the area I
wanted to work in. So, then I was
placed with the audio calibration
team and I had a six-month project
as an intern creating 3D surround
sound, putting speakers in the roof of
the vehicle and conducting listening
tests.”
She came back to Jaguar Land
Rover on its graduate scheme and
the first few roles she held at Jaguar
Land Rover were on the audio side.
However, the graduate scheme
involved placements around the
business in manufacturing, quality,
CAD and even public relations.
14 WWW.EUREKAMAGAZINE.CO.UK | NOVEMBER 2019
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