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CareerTrackers intern, Zayne Jeffries plans to pursue a career with Thales

Zayne Jeffries is currently doing his third internship with Thales through CareerTrackers; a national non-profit linking young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults with employers to participate in internships. All of his internships have been invaluable, but Zayne is particularly enthusiastic for his latest opportunity; working as a Combat Systems Engineering Intern at our Above Water Systems Carrington site.

Zayne previously interned with our Avionics department, where he worked as a software engineer and wrote a program that extracts graphical plot data from PDF files and processes it into a Thales specific format. Since February this year, he also interned with the Sales and Marketing team, operating in a data analytics-based role and creating solutions in Microsoft Power BI that aims to make raw data more presentable for a majority of reporting needs. His current placement at Carrington, working as a Combat Systems Engineering Intern, lasts a month, and he is loving every minute of it. 

He says, “Working with defence has always been a dream of mine ever since I switched my degree into Computer Science back in 2017. Just being able to work with Thales got me the closest I had ever been to this dream. Working here now in Carrington has been one of the most exciting experiences I have had in my career as an intern with Thales.”

Zayne has enjoyed his internship journey with Thales. “All of my internships have had challenges that I have had to face, be it an engineering problem or a communication problem. Thankfully, my years of university have taught me to see each challenging problem as a series of smaller subproblems that aren’t too difficult to solve on their own. Each time I solve one of these small problems is another milestone. It keeps me going knowing that when I complete one of these milestones, I am getting closer to having a professional, in-depth knowledge of the field I am working in as well as a sliver of the ultimate reward: solving the problem.”

When asked what he’d like to do when he completes his studies, Zayne says he sees his future at Thales and plans to be here for a while yet.

“I am using these internships to weave myself into the Thales cloth so that I can stick around for a while longer. The opportunities Thales has presented me have been unique and not available at other places I have worked at such at the ATO and Clayton Utz. With Thales, I hope to become acquainted with embedded systems development in industry as opposed to the smattering of general knowledge provided to me by university. I am aware Thales has facilities for embedded systems development and I hope to see myself there someday. I would like to move to Melbourne after completing my university studies in Newcastle and am hoping that something comes up within the OneSky project down there!”

Zayne is grateful for the opportunities and experiences through Thales and CareerTrackers and has made some wonderful friends. Outside of work, he is a passionate musician and attempts to compose a song at least once per week. He can hear entire compositions in his head sometimes and can’t rest until he’s converted it all to guitar! Apart from that, Zayne enjoys hanging out with his friends, video games, Kevin Smith films, nice cafes and lifting very heavy weights.

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