Student on the road to success at Mercedes AMG

A GCU student is revving up to begin a graduate position with Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains, the company who supplies engines to Mercedes Formula 1 Team.

MSc Computer Aided Mechanical Engineering student TJ Scott was one of only four people approached for the job out of thousands of students competing at Formula Student, Europe’s most coveted educational engineering competition, earlier this summer.

He attended the competition in July with his fellow GCU Racing teammates with a car they had designed and built to compete against over 100 teams from other universities.

At the competition, TJ and his team were questioned vigorously by judges to justify all of the engineering decisions behind the creation of the car. A representative from Mercedes was so impressed by TJ’s engineering knowledge that he invited him for an informal preliminary interview at the track while the competition was ongoing.

Following a successful initial conversation, TJ was then invited to Mercedes’ headquarters in September to embark on the next stages of the interview process.

“I went down to Brixworth, which is where their headquarters are and had to prepare a ten-minute presentation on me, my background and why I think I’d be good for the position. Then there was an hour and twenty-minute long interview where they asked me questions about situations and what I’d do in them.

“Because my interview was an hour and twenty minutes long I was thinking it was a long time for an interview so I must have done something wrong. When I came away from the interview I actually felt really bad about it thinking I’d messed it up and done rubbish.”

He had in fact done no wrong, and was sent a formal job offer a few weeks after the interview.

TJ will finish his Masters’ year before beginning his graduate position in September 2024. The programme’s structure is designed to allow TJ and fellow graduates to be rotated around multiple sections of the powertrain department, learning about how the full system works together before being placed in a permanent position at the end of the programme.

He will then be a fully-fledged team member of one of the most successful teams in Formula 1, helping to develop engines for cars driven by Sir Lewis Hamilton himself.

His excitement for beginning the programme is palpable, and he explained that his department and teammates have been both extremely supportive and excited for him.

“I’ve had quite a lot of congratulations from folk. My dad is also a huge Mercedes fan so he’s very excited. I think everyone is excited for me and I really appreciate that.”

For TJ, the reality of getting this job has not quite sunk in, “it’s a really weird feeling, it’s not really something I considered before. It’s something you look at and think wow that would be good but it’s never going to happen, it’s not something you even put into the realm of possibility.”

Although TJ was offered the job before the beginning of the new academic year, he chose to stay at GCU for one more year to complete his Masters’ year to have one final chance at competing in Formula Student with GCU Racing.

“I’m very grateful that we have the Formula Student team at GCU so I could get the chance to take part. The whole event is essentially a giant recruitment event and if I hadn’t been down there with our car to justify the engineering behind it and show our engineering knowledge I never would have been approached for the job, especially now when it’s so hard to get a job in any field, I’m just really grateful to have had that opportunity because I would never be where I am without it.”

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By Derry Wyllie.