Recruiting and retaining the best people to work for BAE Systems Australia enables the Company to build complex systems and equip our customers with the most advanced hardware and systems.
Meet Joe, a 22-year-old from Melbourne. Before landing a placement in BAE Systems’ mechanical engineering degree apprenticeship program with RMIT University, Joe took the initiative—self-funding two trips to Adelaide for internships with BAE Systems at the Osborne Naval Shipyard. Why? To see firsthand if a career in defence engineering was his calling. Spoiler: it was.
“I had worked with engineers and trades before at a non-destructive testing contractor,” Joe said. “I was frustrated at the cultural disconnect between the practical experience of trades versus the theoretical expertise of engineers.”
“Engineering projects should be informed by real life experience,” he added.
Joe was interested in defence and thought that BAE Systems might have the career challenge he was looking for.
Joe participated in our internship program at Osborne in 2023, paying for the cumulative 3,000 kilometres of driving and almost 15 weeks of Airbnb accommodation. He repeated the exercise in early 2025.
“For the first internship trip in 2023, my flight was a couple hours after I finished the Melbourne Marathon,” he said.
He arrived in Adelaide late but couldn’t check into the share house Airbnb.
“They gave it to someone else,” he said. Luckily, there was another room, although it took the host several hours to figure that out.”
In both internships, Joe worked in manufacturing engineering for the Hunter class anti-submarine warfare frigates, first with welding engineers and then with coating/material technologists.
Asked about his observations, he said he was surprised about how much the company invests in the education and wellbeing of our people.
“In the shipyard, I saw trades and engineers working together—solving problems instead of playing the blame game,” he said.
In February 2025, Joe joined the first cohort of our new Mechanical/Systems Engineering Degree Apprenticeship with RMIT University.
“The opportunity appealed to me because it connects learning theory in school, with real world application, all while being paid a salary,” he said.
The RMIT degree apprentices spend two days per week in class and three days a week in the office.
Working in a corporate office is a new experience for Joe.
“Senior staff are so open and willing to give advice and time. The humility and lack of hierarchy. That’s pretty special,” he said. “I haven’t met someone I haven’t liked.”
Joe said that more senior colleagues have counselled him to focus on building relationships in the organisation.
“The idea of making a conscious, proactive effort to build relationships, is a new experience for me,” he said.
Meanwhile at RMIT, Joe is practising engineering drawings from scratch and his class is building a ‘Bob the Builder’ toolbox out of sheet metal.
“Unlike with CAD modelling—with hand drawing there is no CTRL + Z (you can’t just undo it) —you have to be so much more careful and deliberate,” he said.
“We’re engineers but we get to do things with our hands.”
BAE Systems puts its money behind degree apprenticeships because they have a proven track record. We have two programs underway in South Australia, one in Melbourne, and 15 years of experience in the UK across 26 different disciplines.
Those enrolled in the RMIT program can complete two mechanical engineering qualifications over five years whilst being employed and earning a full-time salary. Graduating apprentices will step into our workforce with five years’ experience applying theory into practice.