Tye Brady's Cool Tech Job

What is your current title?
Principal Member of the Technical Staff at Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass.

If you had to write an ad to fill your job, what would it say?
Seeking creative, innovative and team-focused individual to lead team of engineers building a next generation spaceship to land on the moon. Must be willing to listen, learn and contribute. Passion for space exploration is required.

What's the coolest thing about your job?
We are developing a way for tomorrow's astronauts to reliably and robustly land anywhere on the moon and ultimately Mars. To do that, I get to work with the best and brightest people trying to solve hard engineering problems.

What are at least five duties you have as part of your job?
1. Architect (design the system to land on the moon).
2. Advocate (for the system and team).
3. Analyst (making sure the system works as planned).
4. Aligner (align the team to the vision).
5. Advisor (to the team of engineers).

What's the coolest thing you've done so far in your current job?
Talking "shop" with Apollo astronauts. Apollo was a great engineering accomplishment and it is very important to transfer that knowledge to today's engineers. It is a cool day when I get to "kick the lunar tires" with the astronauts and get first-hand knowledge of the lunar environment and landing scenarios.

Does your career ever get dull or routine? How do you rekindle your love for it?
Sure, any job does. When it does for me, I try to connect to the really big picture of human exploration and discovery. Going to the moon is a stepping stone for Mars and beyond. Our work ultimately helps humans explore and discover new worlds which helps add meaning to our existence as humans.

Did you ever expect to have the career you have? 
I have always been fascinated with space and have a disposition for math and science. Engineering is a natural fit, particularly aerospace engineering.

What was your career path?
I started as a co-op at Raytheon in electrical engineering with a really great mentor who constantly pushed me to try my best no matter what I chose to do. The co-op experience gave me a healthy balance of practice and theory and allowed me to acquire a practical electrical engineering design skill ahead of my classmates. I then was able to apply this skill as an undergraduate in a graduate laboratory working with MIT on a spacecraft instrument.

That was the door into NASA and allowed me to demonstrate my passion and skill for spacecraft design to a really smart group of folks at MIT's Center for Space Research. The MIT folks knew no bounds and soon we were designing, building, and testing our own spacecraft to study astrophysics. It was a very small team of dedicated individuals who actually built the spacecraft. This allowed me to acquire valuable engineering experience across multiple disciplines.

This broad base of engineering experience allowed me to join the Space Systems group at Draper where I have worked on a variety of space related projects. As I gained more experience, I realized the importance of innovation and leadership, not just within my group or even company, but for the nation. If we are to truly explore and discover, it will take an uncompromising commitment to leadership to inspire our current and next generation engineers to work as a team building our next generation lunar lander.

My current position as group leader and technical director for lunar landing has given me a wonderful leadership opportunity with a fantastic team of engineers. It is a very cool job.

Do you have advice for how people can find their own cool job and live out their passions?
Cool jobs are those that will make a difference. Cool jobs are those that will make a contribution to society. Cool jobs are those that you can be proud of explaining to others.

This varies from person to person. Use your imagination and try to imagine yourself at retirement. Imagine yourself explaining "that job" to a group of kids. Once you have articulated that in some form, try for another "that job." Keep going until a theme arises. Once you have "that job," the rest is easy. Get educated, get in the area, and get going!

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