 Daniel Gilley
Design Engineer
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space
Sunnyvale, CA
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 B.S. -
Electrical Engineering, Stanford University |
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Design engineering,
working primarily on command and data, handling electronic
subsystems for earth orbiting satellites. |
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"Look for
internships during their sophomore and junior years. It is a
good opportunity to make contacts as well as to gain
experience." |
Gilley:
"The aerospace industry does go up and down. It's cyclical and when I was
hired in it bottomed out and it was just barely starting to swing back up
again and everyone still had a lot of negative memories and the morale was
pretty low, in general, when I hired on but the company finally realized
that things were gone turn around. It was time for another upswing and
they were just starting to hire a few people and I was one of the first of
those and it was really interesting coming into the company and having a
lot of people still pretty gun shy. They could remember 6 months or a year
back when people they'd known were being laid off and everyone was telling
the horror stories and it was pretty strange coming in and being all
enthusiastic and hearing this kind of darker side."
Daniel J. Gilley of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space has always been
fascinated by the space industry. "I grew up watching the satellite down
links from NASA and seeing the pictures of the space shuttle and the
astronauts." Thus his company has been a good match for him. "This was a
company I'd always respected because I was always interested in the jets
and planes and things like that." Now he works on numerous projects in the
electronic products center. "I've been primarily focusing on space, on
satellites. They're mostly earth-orbiting satellites. I work on the
command and data-handling electronics that are in the satellites and
scattered throughout a lot of programs."
Although his work is a dream come true, Gilley still had some surprises
when he started working. "What I'm doing is different than what I
expected. I expected to be solving more calculus problems and more
differential equations because that's what you do in school, but really
that theoretical background doesn't get applied at least, in my job a lot.
There are a lot of parts of electrical engineering that get applied to my
daily job, but not the really low level physics and math."
As a result, Gilley advises that students get practical experience before
they graduate. "I'd recommend that a student who is interested in the
defense or in the space industry really look into projects or courses that
might be applicable. I found a project when I was in school that was a
satellite project and one of my 'ins' to get in here and it was great fun.
We built a small satellite that hasn't been launched yet, but it's
probably going to be launched as a secondary payload in the near future.
So there are exciting projects like that at a lot of colleges that can
make a candidate more attractive to a company."
Gilley also recommends that students look for internships during their
sophomore and junior years. It is a good opportunity to make contacts as
well as to gain experience. Gilley encourages students to overcome their
shyness and pursue the companies. "It's funny because the kind of money
that a student would expect is just pocket change to most companies. They
would be glad to get something useful out of somebody for the kind of
money that would be wealth to most college students."
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