Career Heroes - Ciaran Maxwell

Tell us more about you

I’m married and have two children under the age of five, who take up a lot of my personal time. I enjoy spending time with them and seeing how their little minds work and grow. They give me the passion to better myself to try and set a good example for them to follow. Before I had kids, I enjoyed gaming, mainly racing simulation games and military/special ops games.

I love football, both watching it and trying to play it. I support Arsenal and Carrick Rangers. Supporting these teams has definitely taught me how to handle disappointment over the years but it makes the success taste even sweeter. I also love cars and I’m fascinated by Formula 1 due to the engineering involved. I enjoy listening to most genres of music; growing up I was into House and Techno, although my last concert was the Spice Girls in Dublin back in 2019!

What kind of work do you do?

My role within the company is to bring feasible carbon reduction projects to the senior team for approval. I research new technology that may be available, which could be implemented on site at Ryobi to reduce our carbon footprint.

How did you become a Renewables Engineer?

I left school after my GCSEs and went to Northern Regional College, where I completed a BTEC National Diploma in Engineering and an NVQ Level 2 in Performing Engineering Operations. During my Apprenticeship, I completed a HNC (Level 4) in Operations and Maintenance Engineering and an NVQ Level 3 in Manufacturing Engineering.

I started working in Ryobi in September 2007 as an Apprentice in the Die Maintenance (DM) department. I completed my Apprenticeship in 2010 and became a DM Technician before getting promoted to Senior DM Technician in 2013.

After nearly ten years in DM, I transferred to the Die Cast Engineering (DCE) department. I had a steep learning curve going from a hands-on fitting technician job to a theory-based engineering job. I was thrown into the deep end to be the Lead Engineer on the most important product for Ryobi’s business. I expanded my technical abilities in DCE, as this role incorporates all aspects of the business, which I had to learn. After five years in DCE, I started looking for a new challenge and I was lucky that my current role as a Low Carbon & Renewables Project Engineer became available.

If you could do-over, What would you do differently?

Looking back, I might have gone to university to complete an Environmental degree. It might have gotten me to this role sooner, but it’s a very new specialist area (the job was only created in Ryobi about a year ago). Sometimes opportunities develop over time, so going back and changing something might not have got me to this place any quicker.

If I hadn’t taken the path I did, I’d definitely tell my teenage self to get an Apprenticeship to become an Electrician or Software Engineer, as these are now very in demand and well paid professions.