- Company has doubled number of female engineers since March
- But still a low number of applications from women in engineering
- Call being made on International Women in Engineering Day
SL Controls, the specialist software integration firm, is looking for female engineers to join its team.
In March, the company announced it would be creating 50 new highly-skilled jobs over the next 18 months to bring the total workforce to 140.
Since then, SL Controls has hired three new female engineers to bring to 5 the total number of female engineers at the company. However, it remains difficult for all employers to find female engineers to fill positions.
Today, June 23 is International Women in Engineering Day (INWED) and the company says it would like to see more women encouraged to go into engineering as a career.
In September, SL Controls will be launching a new initiative where its engineers will spend time in primary schools engaging with 5th class students about engineering and its real world applications.
Established in 2002, SL Controls is an international provider of equipment system integrated solutions to a range of world-leading brands across a number of industries including Medtech, Pharma, Healthcare and Technology.
An Enterprise Ireland client, SL Controls has offices in Sligo, Dublin, Limerick, Galway and Florida and has customers – mainly multinationals – in Ireland, across mainland Europe and the US.
Shauna Ryan, SL Controls’ HR Manager, says the company is making a concerted effort to hire female engineers but the number of women applying for roles such as Systems Engineers and Validation Engineers was still low.
“There is not a huge volume of women applying for the roles and we would like to encourage more women to think of engineering as a career. We are actively trying to target and attract females to our roles but the effort to get more women into engineering needs to happen earlier – in our schools and at home. Very little has been done to explain to young people – especially young girls — how much engineering has evolved over the last 20 years. We want to get young people excited about, and interested in, engineering.”
“One of the missing links is that a huge proportion of young people are choosing their third-level courses and future careers without ever speaking to someone who works in the field. We are starting a new programme in September where SL Controls engineers will show 5th class students what being an engineer is all about. We hope this will encourage more students – both male and female – to take up STEM subjects in secondary school, and ultimately consider engineering as a career.”
Keith Moran, SL Controls founder and CEO, says:
“The education system is struggling to keep up to date with real world advances, which have been accelerated by Industry 4.0. New exciting career opportunities are being created in the equipment systems engineering (ESE) field by Industry 4.0 but we need to invest in educating our young people if Ireland is to capitalise on this unique opportunity. To be ready to capitalise on Industry 4.0, Ireland needs engineers who are not just trained in one discipline, but ones who are interdisciplinary or even antidisciplinary.”
