Motorsport Jobs: Why data engineering is a key motorsport career
AmD Tuning British Touring Car Championship team managing director Shaun Hollamby believes anyone aiming for a top-level motorsport engineering career should start as a data engineer
Hollamby has 30 years of experience in national motorsport, and currently fields a four-car team - two Audis and two MGs - in the BTCC.
He describes data engineering as "an important skill" and one that has become "sort of the only way into engineering".
A team's data engineer is a vital link in the organisation, interpretating the information logged by the car's sensors and the drivers' feedback to help the team's work on set-up and developments and drivers to refine their performance.
But Hollamby warns that not all data engineers he has employed at AmD have lived up to expectations.
"We have other data engineers that just want to look at video all day and talk about how they can be a racing driver," Hollamby told Motorsport Jobs.
Hollamby believes the most valuable quality any engineer coming into the motorsport industry can have is a strong work ethic, suggesting such an attitude can outweigh academic qualifications.
"Don't get me wrong having the degree is obviously good, having the letters at the end of your name are always going to be a benefit, but to start with you have to have a work ethic and in all honesty not everyone with a degree also has a work ethic," he says.
The AmD boss advocates getting practice work experience as soon as possible, and to start at a local level.
"The best thing to do is to find a local motorsport team - there is always going to be someone near you - contact them, and see if you can spend some evenings down there.
"First of all you could load the truck. If any team boss sees someone willing to get stuck in, loading wheels into a truck and they have an eye for detail, not damaging things, they will be keen to get them in for the weekend."
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