Tiago

28 - PLC Engineer.

Tiago is from Lisbon where he studied electrical engineering at university. In fact he would have rather studied psychology however in Portugal it was more important at the time to find a career with many jobs available. Within university he actually participated in the Erasmus Programme in his last semester, doing a 6 month mechatronic internship in Eindhoven. During these 6 months he lived in a flat with a Chinese and Arab student and the accommodation was only partly paid by the university.

When he returned to Portugal his university course had ended and he applied for his first jobs in his field. The first company he worked for was ‘National Oilwell Varco’ as a PLC engineer. He worked in this company for 11 months, 3 of which he was stationed in Norway. However this company cut down on 70% of employees and therefore Tiago had to look for other work. This is when he got the job in Vanderlande and has said he decided to apply there due to his 6 months experience in Eindhoven previously with Erasmus.

From the time of the visit he had only worked in Vanderlande 9 months but is planning to stay on for 2-3 more years. His role in the company is to work closely with a particular part of a larger airport system such as unloading or sorting baggage and code the machinery to do as it is meant to. In the future he hopes to do a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and therefore will be moving away from the Netherlands to do so.