Having initially followed her passion for music and languages, the leap to engineering manager for Liberty IT’s Berni Greer was a lucky chance and she has never looked back since.
With more than eight years at Liberty IT, Berni Greer has experience of diverse roles across the organisation, including process improvement analysis, consulting and her most current role as an engineering manager.
Despite displaying obvious aptitude in the area as a young woman, with a love for maths and physics, engineering was not a career route she foresaw for herself. A talent for languages and music brought her to Queen’s University Belfast and then onto a HR position at Capita HR Solutions.
With an eye on the jobs landscape, Greer quickly recognised that she had built up an eclectic list of skills, applicable to a diverse range of positions and made the decision to jump industries and start anew.
The unique journey she took to break into the IT sphere and the key mentorship she received along the way brought her unexpectedly to a career she loves. Her advice for anyone looking to make a similarly expansive leap is to identify “development gaps” and get the support and opportunities you need “to help close those gaps”. Most importantly, if you want to become an engineer, Greer says: “Go for it, and take all of the opportunities that come with it.”
Here, she tells us a bit more about her career journey.
What first stirred your interest in a career in engineering?
When I was at school, I had never anticipated or even considered that I would have a career in engineering. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I can appreciate that it was always a potential career path, because I enjoyed studying maths and physics, but didn’t pursue them past secondary education. Instead, I favoured languages and music and opted to continue following those interests.
This led me to graduating from Queen’s University Belfast with a degree in music with latin. When I share this background with engineers, they often acknowledge that they have a talent for music or languages, so there is clearly a correlation between these skills and what makes a good engineer!
What brought you to your current job?
Happenstance! After I left university, I settled into a HR role with Capita HR Solutions, and whilst studying for an MSc in HR management, I moved through various roles including quality, customer service, process improvement and change management. Because work varied across multiple customers and contracts, I was happy to remain there and continue to gain experience. Until I saw a role posted by Liberty IT, a process analyst role which sounded strikingly similar to my current role, albeit in a different industry. I had heard that Liberty IT was a great employer, and when I got the role and started, I found this to be true.
In my eight and a half years at Liberty IT, my role and team has evolved greatly, from process improvement analysts, to agile coaches and capability specialists before our most recent evolution to consultants.
This last change truly reflected the nature of the service that this team provided in terms of consultancy across Liberty IT and our parent company Liberty Mutual Insurance, whether that was product, innovation, technical or business consultancy. Alongside my day job, I have had a few stretch opportunities to try scrum master and delivery lead roles, which sparked my interest in the transition to the engineering manager career path.
What were the biggest surprises or challenges you’ve encountered in engineering?
Honestly, the biggest challenge has likely been my own self-belief. Despite being almost 10 years into my professional working life when I joined Liberty IT, I didn’t have a background in IT or engineering, and the subsequent imposter syndrome that I experienced was off the charts.
For the first five to six years, I introduced myself saying ‘I don’t have a background in IT’, outwardly diminishing my previous professional experience with every fresh interaction. However, I reasoned that I had achieved my background in IT, by pushing myself out of my comfort zone, demonstrating impact and gaining respect from my colleagues, so I actively decided to retire that intro.
Was there any one person who was particularly influential as your career developed?
Without naming anyone in particular, I’m really lucky to have had a few exceptional managers and mentors in my career who have been really influential. On reflection, they have shared similar attributes and as a consequence I try to emulate those attributes in my behaviour and interactions with others, both as a manager and a peer, so that I can have a similar impact.
I consider them influential because they have been active listeners, direct but caring with feedback, encouraging and most significantly of all, they have been genuinely supportive and empathetic in how they have valued both my professional growth and personal wellbeing.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
I really enjoy the diversity of my job and how it varies day to day. My focus could be one-to-ones, my own personal development, stakeholder management, ways of working or working directly with engineers. I’m currently working with two engineering teams, one of whom is working to replace a legacy system, whilst another is working on a migration project.
Working with and being responsible for supporting talented engineers is a privilege. I enjoy encouraging individuals to self-reflect on what is going well and celebrating those successes. As well as identifying opportunities or development areas, then working to address those.
Continuous improvement is at the heart of everything I do, whether that’s on a personal, individual level or in the service that we provide to our customers.
What aspects of your personality do you feel make you suited to engineering?
It’s highly likely that my determination (some may call it stubbornness) aligns with my constant need to problem solve and to understand the root cause. That can be applied to scenarios with people, or team and project issues, and also my personal life as a mum of three boys.
From a people manager perspective, it’s probably my natural inquisitiveness that I lean into most during one-to-ones and team conversations. In my experience, building rapport and understanding context are the foundations for having meaningful conversations, and fundamental to fully being able to support team and individual needs.
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