I knew that I wanted to be a mechanical engineer at 13,” Rebecca explains. “I was at the Eastern Conference Finals, which is a junior dragster race, and my car kept popping off the belt. So we bought a new clutch and the man who installed it explained everything about how it worked. I looked at him, and asked: ‘What do you do?’” After telling Rebecca that he was a self-taught mechanical engineer, she decided that this was the profession she was made for — complimenting her love of building and fixing things.
Growing up working on drag racers with her dad in their garage has fostered both her knowledge and passion for engineering. “Being in a garage, I know what tools are — as silly as it sounds, so many people don’t know what a combination wrench is — it really helps out to have that mechanical background. The bolts are significantly larger on the turbines I work on, but it’s all the same thing — a bolt’s a bolt, a nut’s a nut.” Rebecca is modest though — her job involves fixing gas turbines, huge unwieldy machines, some of which you have to physically climb into to repair.
Sharing a common drive
Rebecca’s job and her love of drag racing have more in common than a similar skill set. Teams of experts are sent out to get entire businesses running again, and she thrives on the camaraderie.
“In the field you become a family, kind of like at the racetrack. You meet so many different people, but always seem to have someone on your job that you had on the last one. You have this familiarity with the people, and if you get to run with the same crew, it’s awesome. We spend all day at work together, then we go to the hotel and we grill out and have dinner . For that moment in time, you’re one unit — you’re a family.”
It’s rare to find the same kind of culture and atmosphere among your colleagues as it is your friends, but for Rebecca this is simply the reality of her work.
Ultimately, for Rebecca, the biggest reward lies in seeing the fruits of her labor and solving the problems she’s set as a Field Service Engineer. Much like drag racing, there’s a clear end goal in building or fixing what’s in front of you, and bringing something to life that was previously just metal: “At the very end, once you’ve put all this time and effort into it, you are sitting there during startup and you hear that turbine come to life. You know that 10 days ago this thing was just pieces and parts everywhere, and now it’s running, and we did that.”
Rebecca Eyer has worked at Siemens since 2012. She’s based in Houston, Texas. Find out more about working at Siemens.
Photography: Fernando Decillis
Illustration: Charlotte Trounce; Angelica Lena
Video: David Parker
Animation: Sentiospace
