Find out what it’s like to work at Inzpire from a graduate’s perspective
16 Jan 24
Youth EngagementCareersInzpire Culture
BY Max Rubens
Max Rubens, a business development and sales graduate at QinetiQ, recently joined us on a six-month secondment as part of his professional development to gain a diverse array of experience in the defence sector. We caught up with him to find out how his time at Inzpire has helped to shape his long-term career goals and knowledge of the industry.
Take it away Max…
My interest in the defence industry began from a very young age, when my first proper experience of aerospace and defence was going to air tattoos with my family, seeing Concorde at Brooklands and going to the British Military Tournament at Earls Court Exhibition Centre.
I studied politics and international relations at the University of the West of England and wrote my thesis on the Royal Australian Navy. I then went to Durham for my master’s during the Covid years where my thesis focused on the Outer Space Treaty and space warfare.
After finishing my master’s degree, I was successful in joining QinetiQ’s graduate scheme; I knew the aerospace and defence sector was right for me as I was very passionate about serving our warfighters’ needs in a customer-facing role.
I came to Inzpire in May 2023 in my first external placement from QinetiQ. I’m the first graduate to be seconded over to Inzpire so far and the opportunity happened because of a chance encounter with Inzpire personnel at QinetiQ’s head office in Farnborough, when I was relatively new to the company. I found out about the subject matter expert consultancy services they provide to QinetiQ and other customers which left me eager to learn more.
My time at Inzpire has been very educational, and it’s certainly had a very positive impact on my career. I’d say the biggest takeaway has come from working within the various operational business units at Inzpire and seeing how colleagues solutionise - drawing from their real-world experience as ex-military or reservist personnel. A lot of business development and sales activity can feel quite divorced from the end-user and their operational needs, but Inzpire has equipped me with a new capability to scope-in on the end-user requirements and accomplish my prime objective of providing quality services for our customers.
One of the first things I noticed is that Inzpire is a very people-orientated company. You can really tell everyone genuinely loves doing what they do and that’s a big motivational factor when carrying out your day-to-day duties.
One of the highlights of my time was a placement week with Mission Systems and Support OBU, where I got to spend a week up in Lincoln. There I got to learn more about GECO, a software package that provides mission planning and navigational capabilities to pilots and aviators. During this time, a session on risk (and how to minimise and mitigate it) was particularly important, as a running theme of my time at both Inzpire and QinetiQ has been our strong appreciation of safety and the importance of promoting a safety culture at work.
Whilst in Lincoln, I also had the opportunity to visit the Air Warfare Centre at RAF Waddington where I got to see the work Inzpire do in collective training and simulation. I even got to fly one of the Eurofighter Typhoon simulators and managed to land without crashing.
After a brilliant six months at Inzpire, I look forward to applying my new skills throughout the remainder of my graduate programme at QinetiQ.
See what else Max has to say about his time at Inzpire, plus his top tips for other graduates in this video.
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