Institution news
Tell me a bit more about you!
I'm Oliver Gent and I've been at Callen-Lenz for about coming up to two years as a Systems Engineer. We do blank-sheet designs all the way through to making and selling our products to customers and I get involved with a lot of different areas, like the avionics, power systems and the control systems on our aircraft, but also things like flight testing.
How has being a part of the UAS Challenge prepared you for working at Callen-Lenz?
It's been really good! A lot of the skills that we learn at the UAS Challenge are pretty much directly applicable and all that experience feeds in directly to what we do in industry.
Those skills of figuring out requirements for autopilot systems, setting tasks, keeping to deadlines, as well as dealing with project management from start to end as well, it’s all been super useful in my current role.
It's been great to see so many aircraft around the hangar this year – I’m still working my way through seeing everybody. There are some really interesting designs and there are more composites and manufacturing methods here – there’s much more than we had when I was entering and it's great to see!
Oliver works on his 2021 UAS during the fly off event.
What would you say to a student who is thinking about doing the UAS Challenge?
It's just the best experience that you can get for a job and for interviews. If you have that direct experience of designing and building something, and working with people; these are really key skills, plus they are great to talk about in interviews.
When you’re only a team of ten at the fly-off, there’s no room for slacking off and you have to get your hands dirty with everything, so you learn a lot very quickly.
Even if the company is not directly into UAVs, if it's in some other industry, then you've still got that valuable experience of teamwork and developing something real that companies look for.
Oliver and his team celebrate their 2022 championship win with former IMechE President Phil Peel.
How can UAS Challenge participants learn more about Callen-Lenz?
If you want to go into the UAV industry, there are some great graduate opportunities and placement schemes at Callen-Lenz that you can get involved with. We’re a down-to-earth company full of practical thinkers, so experience of the UAS Challenge is perfect for us.
We want people to have that real-world experience because that's what we do; we do a lot of paperwork, design and simulation, but ultimately it's about going out, testing the hardware, and getting something in your hands during manufacturing and optimisation.
We’re always looking for not only talented engineers to join our team but also lots of other exciting roles across the business from areas such as business development, project management, manufacturing and many more.
To find out more about these opportunities visit our website or email recruitment@callenlenz.com to speak to our recruitment team about careers or placements here at Callen-Lenz.
The UAS Challenge 2025 will open for registration in late September 2024, for further details please visit the competition's website.