Caoimhe Mooney is an AI software development engineer with Intel Ireland, which she joined in June 2020. She is a graduate in computer engineering from Trinity College Dublin. 

1) At what age (or stage of your life) did you start to think about becoming an engineer? 

I didn’t think about becoming an engineer until I was in fifth year in school. Up until transition year I was convinced I wanted to be a primary school teacher and then, after work experience, I decided it wasn’t for me, which meant I had to go back to the drawing board.

I was considering doing science in college and then my school had people from Google come in to talk about engineering. They made it sound like all the practical sides of science that I enjoyed, so I decided why not give it a go?

I think my dad wasn’t too happy how excited I was about engineering that day because he had spent months suggesting I look into it and encouraging me to consider it and suddenly, after one talk, I was interested!

2) What skills do you need to become a good engineer?

Everybody always says problem solving and I would agree but I think it’s a bit more than that. It’s being willing to throw out ideas and try things even if they might not work to get an idea of what will work and building off that. It’s also problem solving with a team.

Everybody has an impression of engineers, especially software engineers, that we are awkward people who don’t work well with others, but I’d say that’s the complete opposite, because all we do on a daily basis is work with a team to solve problems.

3) What can be done to encourage more people, and in particular young girls, to explore careers in engineering?

I think the biggest setback is people don’t know what engineering is or what different types of jobs you can do upon graduation. Everybody has a set idea of what an engineer does, be it build bridges or make robots but, with engineering, there is a whole raft of options.

If somebody is interested in science and maths but not sure what they want to do I would recommend engineering because the options are limitless. I write code on a daily basis and went to college with people who work on building sites or design biomedical devices such as hip replacements. There are so many routes to take, and you can start off in general courses to figure out what areas appeal to you most.

4) For you, what are the really interesting aspects of engineering?

Not working on the same thing everyday is the biggest thing for me. Every morning I log on and while I’m still working towards the same end goal there’s something different waiting for me. Some days it can be tougher with things being broken and debugging but the satisfaction after something that was broken starts working again is definitely a great feeling. 

5) What is your favourite thing about your job?

The people. You spend so much time working with different teams to achieve the final goal that if you don’t like the people you’re working with it’s going to be a tough job. I’ve been incredibly lucky with who I’ve worked with, and I would definitely say they make the job that bit easier.

6) How has the career differed from what you expected, particularly initially?

Initially I had no idea what to expect. I did an internship with Intel when I was in my fourth year in college because I felt that the theory I was learning in college wasn’t helping me understand what jobs I would actually be doing once I went into industry.

I expected everybody to know everything and that I would be completely lost. I was completely lost for a while, but I had started around the same time as more senior people, and they were a bit lost too, so it helped to reassure me that I was at the level a new hire should be and I wasn’t completely out of my depth. 

7) What has surprised you the most during your career as an engineer?

That you don’t have to be all technical all the time and there are opportunities to work on other skills that you enjoy too. I was scared going down the technical route that I would get stuck if I didn’t like it. Turns out I do like it, but I am also now involved in other initiatives within Intel that break away from the technical side of things such as being a committee member for Connecting Women in Tech (CWIT) and co-chairing the Leixlip sites NextGen employee group.

These roles provide me with opportunities to network outside of my technical group. With CWIT I have been involved in organising events to encourage women to pursue a technical career after college.

With NextGen we work on professional growth and networking within Intel. Both of these take a step away from the technical work I do and take a more people-influenced role, which I enjoy alongside my technical role.

8) What inspires you about your work?

Seeing technology in action and the implementation in a real world scenario of what you’ve been working on is fascinating. To feel like you are, even in a tiny way, influencing the process is pretty mind-blowing on a daily basis.