5 minutes with... Sam Lester

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I grew up in Melbourne and after building a motorised scooter with a chainsaw engine with my dad at 14, and then rebuilding a 1971 Datsun 1600 as my first car from the age of 16, it became pretty clear that I wanted to be an engineer. After finishing school I was accepted into Aerospace Engineering at Monash University and while I completed my studies, I worked on the university motorsport team to build and race an open wheel racing car against other universities from around the world. This was an amazing experience and as luck would have it, opened doors for me to move to Germany shortly after finishing university and work in Formula 1 with the Red Bull Racing F1 Team as their Communications Engineer where I travelled to each race around the world.

After three and a half years in F1, I decided it was time to move back to Melbourne and return to a more normal lifestyle. This allowed me to spend more time with my friends and family, meet my now wife, and get back to activities such as water skiing. I initially stayed with radio communications, delivering the voice communications system for the first Sydney Metro driverless train line, but eventually in search of returning to my Aerospace roots, I joined Thales in 2021.

What has your career at Thales looked like so far?

I initially joined Thales on the OneSKY project working on the Arrestor subsystem, which is a system which allows the air traffic controllers to control the hookwires used on the runway at some Australian Air Force Bases to help the fast jets to come to a stop smoothly when they land. This allowed me to experience the full engineering lifecycle from concept to reality as Systems Engineer and later Technical Lead.

I’ve just transitioned to a new role as a Team Lead within TopSky – ATC One where my day-to-day activities see me helping with the planning and tweaking of task allocations, coordinating and communicating with other teams, leading agile ceremonies, tracking and reporting progress and just generally supporting in any way I can to allow the talented software engineers to work their magic.

I’m also lucky to be on the 2024 APAC Shadow Execom, an internal initiative that aims to involve employees as spokespersons for the organization and its collaborators outside the classic hierarchical pyramid, and have the opportunity to participate in various activities outside of the regular day-to-day project work which has also been very rewarding.

Do you find similarities between your position in F1 industry and here at Thales?

Definitely. Working as part of large team of very talented individuals all focussed on achieving a common goal has parallels between the two. In F1, the results are more immediately obvious when a race is won or lost, however in Thales we rely on the regular motivation and perspective provided by leadership to stay aware of the significance of what we are all working to achieve and receive feedback. I find it really incredible to see so many people working together on such a large project (at both companies), it really amazes me every day what can be achieved when humans work together.

Why did you choose to join Thales and the Airspace Mobility Solutions business line?

I originally did not take much notice of Thales AMS job listings because I did not have a software background, but when I found out that non-software engineers were needed too, I was interested to apply. Having worked for a small radio communications company for 6 years, I was looking for experience in a large organisation in the Aerospace sector and Thales and the OneSKY project fit those requirements. The feeling of helping build such a significant piece of Australian infrastructure has been a bonus.

Do you have any advice for people interested in joining Thales?

Do it! Thales develops a lot of interesting projects so if you do not find your place straight away, the business is very supporting of moving people internally to help them find their ideal environment. This leads to happier employees and a nicer place to work.

If you had to convince engineers to join AMS, what would you tell them?

Thales is working on solving a lot of complex and difficult engineering challenges which will help shape the future that we live in. If you would like to be challenged to get the best out of yourself, work with some very talented people and make a real impact on the future then Thales AMS is the place for you.