ST Engineering’s extensive expertise is for one purpose: to build innovative solutions that make a decisive impact on the challenges of tomorrow.

However, technological know-how and cutting-edge equipment can be found in most places. What is truly unique to ST Engineering is its people, who are rising to the challenge of solving tomorrow’s problems today.

ST Engineering Scholars Low Josef JR’s and Lee Wen-Yi Robyn’s work is completely future-oriented. As a Senior Engineer, Autonomous Solutions, AV Overheads, Commercial/Urban Solutions, Josef led a team to deploy Singapore’s first commercial autonomous bus service and manages the Japan business account. With her eyes on another aspect of our tomorrows, Robyn works to improve the company’s data analytics capabilities to identify and address problems before they hit the shop floor.

The First Connection

As a child, Robyn was fascinated with the show “How It’s Made”. As a university student, she took her interest further into an internship with InnoSparks, ST Engineering’s innovation lab. The internship opportunity and a year of university coalesced her conviction that ST Engineering was the place for her, and thus she took up a mid-term overseas scholarship with the company.

Josef also found his interest - autonomous vehicles (AVs) – during a summer internship. What captured his attention was a business opportunity ripe with growth potential.

There was no better place to explore a wide range of career pathways than in a well-recognised company like ST Engineering. Josef said, “ST Engineering, as a reputable global technology, defence and engineering powerhouse with diverse businesses, is aligned with my desire for rotation opportunities and career diversity.”

He applied for the scholarship, and the rest is history in the making.

Josef Low

Preparing the Future of Engineering

Before they started work, both scholars challenged themselves with an extensive learning curriculum.

In Josef’s learning journey, ST Engineering sponsored his double degree in Mechanical Engineering and Business Administration to support his diverse interests.

He is thankful as he discovered new aspects of both fields and how they could be integrated. “Being part of two faculties allowed access to an array of knowledge areas, perspectives, networks, and areas for skills development.”

“I would say this exposure to diversity was indeed my biggest takeaway from university.”

Such multifaceted learning is key to his role in ST Engineering today. “Financial analysis, business strategy and fundamental economics have actually been applied more than technical and engineering knowledge,” he confessed. However, a process-driven mind-set is key to successful project execution, and he has his engineering background to thank for that.

For Robyn, she cited one key takeaway - how to think quickly to solve problems, a skill that helped her career at ST Engineering immensely.

“The main skillset that I learnt in university is how to break down problems, and to apply fundamental principles, both in terms of engineering skills and problem-solving skills.”

Robyn Lee

Working Now for a Better Tomorrow

Before ST Engineering can begin providing solutions for the future, it has to know where the problems lie.

This is Robyn’s place to shine. ST Engineering assigned her to take charge of interdepartmental projects and gave her a supportive environment to explore beyond the scope of her regular task of assessing the quality of materials provided by various suppliers, working with them to improve their SOPs and identifying lapses before they happen.

However, that is not enough in the current climate. By tapping on data analytics as a resource for information-tracking, she can identify overarching problems through examining recurrent data points.

“Improved data analytics capabilities help ST Engineering move forward by improving both the quantity of data that can be collected, and the depth of the analysis that can be done,” she explained. “Data analytics helps us to make this judgement call quicker, reducing the impact of problems that arise.”

Josef, too, has benefitted from ST Engineering’s empowering work culture. He proudly recalled how he led an internal team to partner with a consortium of local companies to deploy Singapore’s first commercial autonomous bus service.

However, his contributions to ST Engineering’s vision of the future do not end at our borders. Josef also manages the Japanese business account to commercialise autonomous buses in Japan.

“As AVs are a relatively new technology, educating stakeholders and obtaining regulatory approvals are key before eventually closing contracts,” he emphasised. The learning has been wide-ranging, from managing budgets and schedules to managing different levels and interests of stakeholders internally and externally.

It is plain to see that learning and empowering its people is key to ST Engineering and its vision of tomorrow.

Engineers for the Future

Both scholars are enthusiastic about the opportunities ST Engineering has to offer for a broad range of interests.

Robyn smiled: “ST Engineering has such a breadth of products that people here have the opportunity to explore multiple technologies, and a wide variety of roles, both technical and non-technical.”

And Josef had more targeted advice to offer, “From what I’ve seen personally, the momentum we have gained in recent years in the Smart Cities space is encouraging and worth the attention of those interested in new technologies and urban solutions.”

Needless to say, Josef is embracing the opportunities and as evident from his work as well as Robyn’s, the future of ST Engineering is most certainly in good hands.