Professor Weijia Yuan, who is part of the University of Strathclyde's Applied Superconductivity Laboratory, joins Josh to explain how superconducting magnets, not the fusion reaction itself, are becoming fusion energy's hardest engineering problem, and why the next decade could see the first real fusion electricity hit the grid.

This is Episode one of the Superconducting Machines & Systems series with the University of Strathclyde, UKAEA and Engineer a Career.

Every engineer's instinct is to chase efficiency: more power, better shapes, cleaner numbers. Adarsh Bhardwaj thinks that instinct is exactly what's holding the renewables sector back.In this special episode, Josh is joined by Adarsh, an engineer turned entrepreneur and founder of Regeno, the deep tech startup building a plug-and-play wind turbine that can be installed and maintained without a specialist team. From Formula One dreams to Rolls-Royce to raising serious investment, Adarsh shares why practicality beats performance, how logistics and deployment quietly kill renewable projects, and what he learned about backing yourself as a founder.A conversation for anyone in engineering who has ever wondered whether the real bottleneck isn't the technology at all.Follow Engineer a Career -LinkedIn: @engineeracareerInstagram: @engineeracareerTikTok: @engineer.a.careerYouTube: @engineeracareerWebsite: www.engineeracareer.co.uk

Josh sat down with Ryan to talk through his journey from the wee computer guy fixing the school projector to co-founding an AI advisory business, and how a career in software engineering shaped the way he now thinks about the biggest question in the industry.

What stands out about Ryan's story is that the through-line was never really the code. It was the problem solving. From jailbreaking his iPod as a kid to building a Where's Wally clone in Visual Basic at school, the instinct was always the same. He got exposed to programming in fourth year of high school, fell in love with it, and never looked back.

From there it built brick by brick. A placement year at BT that meant driving down to Ipswich in a beat up car for the assessment centre and living alone in a studio flat at twenty. Four and a half years at a startup where he was thrust into cloud infrastructure and told to make it happen. Then the audit world, and eventually founding Adastra with his co-founder Dan a few months ago.

The heart of the conversation is a claim worth sitting with. A developer's job was never to write code. It was to solve a problem. It just so happened you had to write the code by hand to do it. Ryan makes the case that AI does not threaten that job, it sharpens it, and he reaches for the tractor and the arrival of animation software to explain why the fear of a new tool rarely matches what happens next.

He is candid about the gap he sees in businesses right now. Everyone feels like an expert engineer overnight, but few understand the security, the scalability, or how to verify the thing actually works. His advice to students is the same thing he has said for years. Go build something, deploy it to the cloud, put it out in the world, because barely anyone can claim that and it is the real differentiator.

The conversation also gets into why "we must use AI" is the wrong place for any business to start, why the younger generation's lack of preconceived ideas may be their biggest advantage, and why becoming literate in AI is the vocabulary of the future.

If you are a student wondering how to stand out, a graduate weighing up the job market, or an engineering director trying to build an AI strategy, this is an honest conversation about solving problems and building a career without waiting to be picked.

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Applications open in weeks. The people who get the internships, placements and graduate roles are the ones who are ready before they do.In the last of four episodes for the new academic year, Josh shares what he'd tell any engineering student or graduate going after a jobTreat getting the job like a module and give it time every week. Build a base CV and tailor it to every role. Get in early, because some companies hire as applications come in and close when they're full. Josh is honest about a process he thinks is flawed: early-career recruitment is problematic, and it pushes too many good students to the back of the queue. He can't get you a job. But he can help you build towards one and these are the steps he'd take.Ready. Steady. Go.

The simplest habit in this episode is the one you'll wish you'd started sooner.Sixteen years ago, in his first job, Josh was told to keep a notepad. He still does over 25 of them now, filled with notes from across his career. When it came to becoming a chartered engineer, those notebooks were the record he built his whole submission from.This episode is about starting yours. Not a tidy diary, a working log. Josh walks through the rhythm he'd tell any engineering student or graduate to build now, before the new academic yearWhy writing it down matters more than where. Why keeping the record is the thing, not the tool.Why this one habit sits underneath everything that comes later, your applications, your interviews, your chartership years down the line.Recorded at the University of Strathclyde.Part of a four-episode series for the new academic year: Reflect (60) · Recognise (61) · Record (62) · Apply (63).—Follow Engineer a Career on LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok, and come along to our events across Scotland this academic year.

Josh is back with more steps to build your way to a career in engineering.

This one's about the skills you already have and aren't talking about. You go to university or college, you get the degree but the part-time job, the society, the volunteering, the side project are all building capabilities employers want.

Most students undersell them, or forget they count at all.

Josh breaks down where these skills come from, the bar job, the Formula Student team, running a society's finances, managing a golf team, the AI side project and why they belong in your CV, your applications, and your interviews.

The message is simple: what you're doing right now is valuable.

Tell your story before someone tells it for you.

Follow the podcast on Spotify, YouTube, Apple, Instagram and TikTok and come along to an Engineer a Career event this academic year.

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Episode 60 of the Engineer a Career Podcast, with Josh going solo at the start of a new academic year to reflect on his own engineering degree what he got right, and what he would do differently.Josh started his degree at Glasgow Caledonian University in 2010 and has since gone on to become a chartered engineer, a project manager, and a business owner. He walks through the decisions that shaped that path: joining the Institution of Mechanical Engineers within his first six months, helping revive the university engineering society, taking on the class representative role and finding himself sitting on industrial advisory boards, and choosing the sandwich route that took him to a placement with Volvo in Sweden. The common thread is a continual pull towards industry, from society site visits through to industry-sponsored BEng and MEng projects.The second half is the more honest part. Josh reflects on the time he did not spend understanding his own capabilities or tracking how his skills were developing, the pressure he put on himself to have a career plan long before he needed one, and the applications he left too late with graduate schemes opening in September, he argues the job search deserves to be treated like a module rather than an afterthought. He also looks at the routes he never properly explored, including a PhD, and makes the case for seeing the degree as a stepping stone rather than a destination.A useful listen for any engineering student heading into a new year, and a reminder that the value of a degree is decided as much by what you do around it as what you study in it.Follow Engineer a Career -LinkedIn: @engineeracareerInstagram: @engineeracareerTikTok: @engineer.a.careerYouTube: @engineeracareerWebsite: www.engineeracareer.co.uk

Josh sat down with Ryan to talk through his journey from electrical apprentice to chartered engineer, and how he ended up working as a senior project manager in Perth, Australia.

What stands out about Ryan's story is that nobody handed him the way in. He failed physics twice at school and never considered university an option. When he couldn't get an apprenticeship, he did a pre-apprenticeship course at college, and when that placement couldn't take him on, he printed a brochure, looked up twenty electrical companies and drove round Paisley handing them out door to door.

That is how he found the apprenticeship that started everything.

From there it became a long process of building it brick by brick. Night classes for an HNC while completing his trade papers, then a day release bachelor's degree, then a part-time masters, all while working full time.

Eight years of study without a free afternoon, and a fifteen thousand pound pay cut to make the move from the tools into design at an SME consultancy.

Ryan is candid about why he made that jump. There was nothing about being an electrician that he disliked, but he could not picture forty years of the same work.

That honest conversation with his line manager is what opened the next door, and it is a reminder of how much a good manager can change someone's direction.

The conversation also gets into what he now looks for when interviewing graduates in Australia, why intentional work experience matters more than a grade, and the free software anyone can download today to put a real skill on their CV.

Alongside that, there is a long-held goal to move to Australia, set during his first years as an apprentice and held through several pivots until it happened.

If you are trying to get your first opportunity, weighing up an apprenticeship against university, or wondering whether a trade background is a strength or a setback, this is an honest conversation about building a career without waiting to be picked.

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