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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

This example of engineering on (and under) “the Ice,”—as Antarctica is known—demonstrates the need for ingenuity and improvisation [ieee.org] beyond anything training can provide.

In fact, those characteristics are precisely how British Antarctic Survey (BAS) engineer Julius Rix got his job: “My boss told me I got my first job with him because of my hobby working on old cars,” Rix says. Unlike O’Sullivan, who went to Antarctica as a contract engineer for a one-time gig and now advises startups in and around Palo Alto, Calif., Rix has grown increasingly involved in Antarctic engineering. Rix got that first job maintaining ionosphere-measuring equipment at Halley Research Station on the Brunt Ice Shelf in 2008 after doing a Ph.D. in vehicle dynamics. After two years, he took a medical-imaging job in the United Kingdom. But his old boss lured him back a few years later to move the equipment from the old Halley station to a new one. Now he is a staff engineer at the BAS Cambridge office and has returned to Antarctica twice with a scientific team searching for the world’s oldest ice.
...
Recent job ads for electrical or electronics engineering jobs in Antarctica confirm that while jobs are available for those seeking an unusual workplace, a diversity of experience and willingness to embrace difficult living conditions are prerequisites. Engineers on the Ice do everything from building new facilities to maintaining telescopes and tagging along with scientific teams for temporary projects, as O’Sullivan did. The diversity of roles means that many kinds of engineers can go, but be warned: The competition is stiff.

Good to see a return to the kind of engineering that waned when the embers of the Space Race went cold.

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