From Entertainment to Defence: Brij's Journey in Digital Transformation and Diversity Advocacy at Thales

Created by VERCIDA for Thales

Brijesh Soni is setting an example as a manager, mentor and active member of the REACH Network at Thales.

In my career, I’ve moved from entertainment to defence, but I’ve always been in the technology space. After studying maths and computers at university, I moved into my first role with BT. At the time, BT had loads of websites everywhere and we had to find ways to make that more efficient by migrating all websites and applications to a new common platform. From there, I moved on to Sky TV, so I was still in the entertainment sector, but it was a very different way of working.

At BT, it was quite rigid in terms of processes, while at Sky, the attitude was more about just finding ways to make things happen. The pace was so fast, it was unbelievable. The ambition was high and we delivered Sky’s first e-commerce platform, which was really challenging, but a great achievement.

This was all a good experience leading up to when I joined Thales in 2018 as an Agile Digital Transformation and Cloud Platform Delivery Manager. I’ve always worked in software engineering. BT was more about utilities, Sky was more about entertainment – and at Thales, we have a strong focus on defence and aerospace. This means the processes and governance have to be rigid for obvious reasons, but we still ask if we can do it in an Agile way.

The Agile methodology encourages iterative delivery – more rapid delivery rather than waiting years to start working on something and delivering. We ask ourselves if we can do something a bit quicker while still using the strict governance processes that we have to have in place.

It is a very exciting, dynamic role. I’ve worked on different things, such as a drone management system, and now I’m working on Cloud platforms. We’re trying to modernise and transform things for Thales. AI is an important part of that, but we are looking at ways to use AI to make things easier for us without taking away the need for individuals. We still need people, especially in the defence space.

As well as my work with digital technology at Thales, I am an active member of the REACH network for ethnic minorities within the company. It has just been relaunched and I was massively motivated by a big presentation that some members gave to the whole company. It was about how we can make things better not just for ethnic minorities, but all minority groups. Are we treating people fairly? Are we giving people a fair chance in the company?

This is something I was really keen to get involved in. Some people have been fortunate, while others might just need a bit of guidance. And that guidance could just be seeing someone else who looks similar to them. It’s good to talk to different people and ask what their story is and how they got to where they are today. For me, getting involved with REACH was about helping people in any way I can.

REACH runs different activities throughout the year, especially around big cultural events, as well as Black History Month and Inclusion Week. My main role with REACH is to find new people in the company who might be interested in being members. Then our next phase is to do more with our members. The next series of events support Inclusion Week. Our activities kick off on the 23^rd of September, so please watch out for invites.