The summer before his final year at school, Julian visited the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, where he came across SSTL and the University of Surrey Space Centre’s work on the RemoveDEBRIS mission. Until then, he had been weighing up several different branches of engineering… and although space had always fascinated him, he hadn’t quite imagined it as a career.
“I’d always loved space, but I never really had the belief in myself to say I wanted to work in the space industry. Seeing the work on RemoveDEBRIS, and talking to the people involved, gave me the push to dream a bit bigger.”
That encounter helped lead Julian to study Aerospace Engineering at the University of Surrey, where he completed both his undergraduate and master’s degrees. In January 2022, the connection came full circle when he joined SSTL as a Graduate Electrical Engineer in the On-Board Data Handling team… and, as Julian puts it, he was lucky enough to find the right place straight away.
Since then, he has helped design and test hardware across eight different projects and 13 satellites, including Tyche, HydroGNSS, Lunar Pathfinder and CarbSAR. Five of those satellites are already in orbit.
HydroGNSS marked a particularly important milestone: the first spacecraft to carry hardware Julian had helped design. Lunar Pathfinder will be another, carrying something that began as his own engineering idea.
That ability to stay close to the hardware throughout its journey is a big part of what Julian enjoys about working at SSTL.
“I love being able to follow a piece of hardware from an idea on a page all the way through to something that’s built, tested and eventually bolted onto a spacecraft. You get to be hands-on all the way through.”
But there is another part of the job that matters just as much to him: Outreach.
Having been inspired by engineers he met when he was still at school, Julian now enjoys the opportunity to do the same for others… talking about his work and helping younger people see that a career in space might be possible for them too.
“I had a lot of people help light that spark in me. Being able to pass some of that on to somebody else is a really rewarding part of working here.”
Looking ahead, Julian wants to keep learning and designing, while getting closer to spacecraft operations through launch campaigns and LEOP. And further into the future, there is one ambition he is happy to aim high for: perhaps one day being in the control room when Europe sends its own crewed mission into space.
It is quite a journey from that first conversation at the Royal Society exhibition. And a useful reminder that you never quite know where a few minutes spent sharing your enthusiasm and expertise with someone might lead.