Abiola Onike: Engineer to Market Analyst

Abiola Onike first joined Thales as a Digital Hardware Engineer. Now working as a Market Analyst, his career path has travelled through diverse disciplines and departments across the company. 

After joining straight from the University of Sussex, Abi was able to get hands-on experience with complex technologies. And soon he was joining initiatives aimed at growing and encouraging new talent into the organisation. As part of the regional challenge, he led a team of graduates through a project to support the company’s ‘green’ initiative, and was also recruited as a STEM ambassador, working with young people. He then represented the Crawley site as an Employee Engagement Champion and spent time with university leavers as Chair of the Graduate Committee.

Abi then took on a new role as a Government Relations Executive. This involved promoting the work of Thales UK with influential stakeholders, while learning how the company developed and delivered its business strategy as a world-class technology leader with 64,000 employees and operations in 56 countries. 

From here he moved into a Strategy & Marketing role with the Ground Transportation Systems part of the business. Here, as a Market Analyst, he assesses the competitive environment for Thales UK, to better understand customer needs and the tactics employed by the competition.

Describing part of his day-to-day role, Abiola says: “We work in a highly competitive environment, and there are opportunities for new work constantly coming forward. Part of my role is making sure we have the edge over competitors in the transport sector. That may involve looking at what companies are doing in other parts of the world, seeing how they are performing in the UK and considering that against the needs of our customers.” 

Abi’s experience at Thales shows that diversity of life skills and experience among the team is critical to success. He explains: “The best teams are those that have a diverse approach, where people think differently, whether it is being more progressive, conservative or creative. Engineers need to make connections between real-life and science in order to innovate, and the more ‘lived experience’ you have across a team, the greater the opportunity you have to make these connections.” 

Having completed the Thales Future Leader’s Programme, Abi has had time to reflect on his professional development, his personal growth and possible next steps. “The relationships people have with their data is changing, and younger generations are now more willing to share this information if it will lead to a better service. Big Data is an area that Thales is already exploring across rail and road projects, and this is a topic which I would like to explore in the future.”

Abi and Thales are transforming Britain’s journeys.