Career Close-up is a new video interview series where we chat to senior employees in Ireland’s leading multinationals about their career journeys. This week, we talk to Paul Kelleher, VP of engineering at QT Technologies (Qualcomm Ireland) in Cork.
Welcome to episode three of our new Career Close-up series. In partnership with IDA Ireland, we sit down with senior figures from some of Ireland’s most innovative international companies, to get a sense of their exciting career trajectories.
In our third instalment, Silicon Republic reporter Colin Ryan chats with Paul Kelleher, vice-president of engineering at QT Technologies Ireland Ltd (Qualcomm Ireland). As well as an interest from a young age in maths and physics, a young Kelleher was also very involved in sports, and he credits his sister with his education in engineering at University of Limerick (UL), as she saw his aptitude and put engineering on his CAO form.
“My sister filled up the CAO form and put down engineering,” says Kelleher. “She knew I was good at solving problems, logistics and logical thinking, so that made her think engineering would be a good fit for me. It turned out to be true, so I’m very grateful to her to have picked my career many years ago.”
Indeed he describes his education at UL as “one of the key points” in his career, and he’s thankful in particular to three of his professors who he says heavily influenced him, and to the cooperative education internship programme there. “I still remember what they taught me today,” he says.
Kelleher says the Cork location is ideal from the point of view of working across the time zones during the day in what is very much a global operation there, but he points to many more benefits of living and working in his native city.
“I’m from Cork, so I’m a bit biased, but the universities, the environment, the ecosystem and the technology cluster here in Cork enable us to grow. We’re here in the beautiful Port of Cork, a very vibrant area. It has everything we need: communications, the transport, the talent. We have good neighbours around us and collaboration with other companies, so it’s a good place to live, work and just enjoy.”
Kelleher is a great believer in working well and hard, but also having a good work-life balance, something which he says is helped by the demands of his own teenagers. As regards career, Kelleher has plenty of advice for those starting out, but in particular he recommends having a wide skillset. “Building broad skills over your career will help you later in life. Be patient, build your communication skills, your network. It’s really important to be connected into a large company like Qualcomm. And enjoy life, I think that’s one of the messages I’d tell myself.”
He says that when it comes to working in the tech industry, building resilience is key. “This is a long career in an industry that has ups and downs. You need to build out your skills. Don’t be reliant on one skill, you need skills across multiple areas, everything from writing code, verification, backend, DFT. That will help you become a more well-rounded engineer, that will help you through the difficult times but also help you to appreciate what you have.” Good advice indeed, for any role in the industry.
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