Kameron
Career Profiles
Embracing challenges
Kameron joined SLB in 2012 with a Mechanical Engineering degree from MIT. Seven years later, as Engineering Team Lead for Liner Hanger New Product Development, she is managing a team of engineers and designers working to deliver products that improve reliability and performance in upstream well operations.
Kameron’s workdays are never the same. “A typical day can be full of brainstorming to come up with a creative solution to a technical problem, or it can be spent assessing the feasibility and risk level of a proposed design, performing a root cause analysis, or running an engineering test on a prototype we have developed,” she says. “A lot of my time is spent working through challenges and collaborating with my team.”
The first word that comes to her mind to describe the SLB experience is “international.” Soon after joining the company, Kameron spent nine weeks at the training center in Abu Dhabi, UAE. “I have really fond memories of that time, because of the people I was with,” she says. “We were studying and training hard, but we also had a lot of fun exploring the city. At the end of the course our class celebrated with an extravagant feast. It was an amazing time.”
Working for SLB has heightened Kameron’s taste for adventure. “I have learned to embrace challenges and push myself. My first assignment was abroad as a field engineer in Norway and started off with a one-week orientation in France. That was my first time traveling beyond North America.”
Another word that describes SLB is “challenging.” “SLB constantly challenges its employees with new positions and high expectations. Delivering high-quality work, be it a report, presentation, service or product, is very rewarding for me.”
“The training SLB offers is one of the best things about the company. It exposes you to different locations, different technologies and competencies, and most importantly, different people from around the world that you can learn from and build relationships with.”
Training in SLB, especially hands-on in the field, exceeded Kameron’s expectations. Now, in a technology center, she is learning new things every day from the people around her. “I’m surrounded by people with a lot of experience in various technical realms, from modelling and simulation to prognostic data analytics and high-temperature, high-pressure hardware design.”
Responsibility comes early in your SLB career, Kameron found out. “Early on, I was the only engineer on my team, which allowed me to take full ownership of the project.” Such opportunities to grow personally as well as technically were encouraged by the managers she’s had along the way. “Even as a young engineer, my manager trusted me to make important decisions with his guidance,” says Kameron. More recently, one manager pushed her to pursue a promotion in the technical career track. “His encouragement and support were instrumental in my success with that. Now that I am managing a team and project, I am lucky to have him as someone I can go to for advice.”
Borderless careers are more than a slogan in SLB, says Kameron. “My SLB career has taken me from offshore platforms, semi-submersibles and drill ships in the North Sea to the Middle East, to Texas, and from drilling operations to the technical development of downhole completions products. I’m not entirely sure what is next for me, but yes, so far, my career has definitely been borderless in all ways.”