Career Heroes - Kathryn Bleakley

Tell us more about you

I’m 29 years old and live in Lisburn, though I’m a County Fermanagh girl at heart! I love to travel and enjoy getting into the outdoors in my free time to go hiking and explore new places.

What kind of work do you do?

I’m the Team Lead of the Product Engineering Department in Bloc Blinds. We manufacture and sell blinds for windows. Within the Product Engineering Team we work to design new products and develop existing products to continually improve how they work. My role involves managing a team of five people to deliver projects as quickly and effectively as possible.

My daily tasks can change day-to-day depending on which projects are being worked on. I spend time with team members to review their work and agree next steps to progress their projects, manage project timelines, and assign tasks to make sure work is being completed by set deadlines. I also hold or attend meetings with people from across different departments in the company or with external customers, suppliers, or contractors to discuss updates and share ideas. I conduct testing to prove out design changes either manually or by using robots, and design products using software that allows you to visualise designs and make changes quickly and easily.

We have a hybrid working environment where we can work from home up to two days a week. When not at home, we work from offices in Magherafelt or Belfast.

I work as part of a team, though I also complete tasks independently. Working in a team is brilliant for sharing ideas, solving problems, and learning from others, though it is also important to be able to work alone when required to.

How did you become a Engineering Manager?

After school, I went to Queen's University, Belfast and studied a Master’s in Product Design Engineering. This is a course that combines being creative with the technical knowledge of engineering.

The course was four years of studying and one year in industry on a placement. The placement helps you get real world experience within a company. I spent this year working in the Mechanical Design Team at Sensata Technologies in Antrim. During my studies I also studied abroad for a semester as part of the Erasmus programme. I spent this semester at the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.

After graduating from university, I took up a Graduate Design Engineer role at Bloc. From there I worked my way up to a Design Engineer role in less than a year and then to Product Engineering Team Lead.

Since leaving university I’ve continued my personal development and learning by completing a range of courses and participating in training in various subjects such as engineering, creative thinking, and project management.

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

I really enjoyed my time in university and the experiences that came with it. However, had apprenticeships been more widely available I would have explored this option as a route into my field that allows for practical learning as opposed to classroom based learning.