Employee Spotlight: Rachael Pink

If engineering were a sport, what would it be, and what position would you play?

Engineering is a bit like football. You’ve got a team full of people with completely different strengths - defenders, midfielders, strikers - and everyone brings something important. But it only really works when you’re all aligned, playing the same game and aiming for the same goal. I’d probably sit in midfield, connecting things up, keeping everything moving, and making sure the whole team is working together and heading in the same direction.

What inspired you to pursue a career in engineering?

It started with curiosity. As a child, I was always taking things apart to understand how they worked, which didn’t always go down well at home! That curiosity, combined with a love of maths, naturally led me toward engineering.  I love that I  get to spend my days solving problems.

This year’s INWED theme is “Engineering Intelligence”. What does that mean to you in the context of AB Dynamics’ work?

For me, “Engineering Intelligence” is really about how engineering is evolving beyond just the physical product. It’s about combining hardware with data, software and control to build systems that are far more capable than the individual parts.

At AB Dynamics, that shows up in the work we do on driverless systems and test platforms. It’s not just about building something that moves, it’s about creating systems that can sense what’s happening around them, interpret it, and respond in a controlled and predictable way.

What skills do you think engineers will need to stay relevant as engineering becomes more ‘intelligent’?

The core fundamentals will always matter, but there are a few areas that are becoming much more important. First is systems thinking, being able to step back and understand how complex, connected systems behave rather than just focusing on one part in isolation.

Then there’s data literacy. We have access to huge amounts of data now, but it’s really about being comfortable working with it, interpreting it properly and, importantly, questioning it.

Adaptability is also key. Technology is moving quickly, so having the ability and the mindset to keep learning is critical. Finally, communication is a big one. Engineers need to be able to explain complex ideas in simple terms so that people outside of their specialism can really understand them.

You’ve progressed to Engineering Director, what career decision has most shaped your approach to leadership?

I started by managing a team initially in acoustics, a field where I had strong technical expertise. When I was then asked to lead a much broader, multidisciplinary team in areas where I definitely wasn’t the expert, it was quite a daunting shift.

That experience really shaped my approach to leadership. It made me realise very quickly that you can’t be the technical expert in everything, and you don’t need to be.

Instead, your role becomes about building the right team, creating an environment where people feel confident to challenge and contribute, and asking the right questions to bring out the best in them. It’s much more about enabling great engineers than trying to be the person who has all the answers.

What’s the biggest misconception people have about engineering in the automotive space?

I think the biggest misconception is that automotive engineering is just about the car itself. In reality, it’s become much more of a systems challenge. A lot of the complexity now sits in software, sensing, control and data, especially in areas like ADAS and driverless systems. It’s not just about designing a physical product anymore; it’s about getting a whole ecosystem of technologies to work together safely and reliably.

If you could give your younger self one piece of advice on your first day as an engineer, what would it be?

Don’t feel like you have to have all the answers, a lot of it is about asking the right questions. Early in my career, I underestimated the value of curiosity. The engineers who grow fastest are the ones who are willing to challenge, explore and keep learning.

Which everyday object do you think has the most underrated engineering behind it?

I’d probably say accelerometers, particularly when they’re part of inertial measurement units, are hugely underrated. They’re in so many things we take for granted, from smartphones and wearables to navigation systems and automotive technologies.

At a really simple level, they measure acceleration, but when you combine them with gyroscopes and other sensors in an IMU, you can start to track motion, orientation and position in real time. That’s what enables things like screen rotation in your phone, but also much more complex applications like GPS correction and motion tracking.

At AB Dynamics, they’re critical to driverless systems and ADAS platforms. They form part of motion packs that allow us to understand exactly how a vehicle is moving, even in situations where GPS alone isn’t reliable. What I find really impressive is that these tiny sensors, often just millimetres in size, are doing incredibly complex physics and signal processing continuously, and most people don’t even realise they’re there.

What is the coolest engineering fact you know?

There are so many fascinating facts in engineering, but I’ve always had a soft spot for acoustics. One I really like is that the human ear doesn’t hear sound linearly, it’s logarithmic. That’s why we use decibels to measure it.

It means that if you double the sound energy, it doesn’t sound twice as loud to us. In practical terms, if you put two identical noisy machines next to each other, you’d only hear about a 3 dB increase, which is a much smaller change than you might expect.

What does International Women in Engineering Day mean to you personally?

It’s a moment to celebrate how far we’ve come, but also a reminder of how much further we still have to go. Women still make up only around 16.5% of the engineering workforce in the UK, so there’s clearly more we need to do to improve representation.

For me, that’s not just about equality, it’s about making sure we’re drawing on the full breadth of talent available. If we want to solve the complex challenges ahead, we need diverse perspectives around the table.

Personally, it’s also about visibility. As a mum, it’s really important to me that my daughter grows up seeing that a career in engineering is not only possible, but something she can aspire to. If more young women can see people like them in these roles, it helps them believe that path is open to them, and that can be incredibly powerful.

For information on how you can progress your engineering career with AB Dynamics, visit our careers page: https://www.abdynamics.com/careers/