Breaking barriers and redefining her path: Mansi Nayee's journey from Software Apprentice to ML Ops Engineer at Thales

Can you build a career in engineering without top A-level grades?

Yes. Mansi Nayee received CCDE at A-level, but her initiative, personal projects and an extended research project on technology in healthcare won her a place on a Thales apprenticeship. Over five and a half years she combined two apprenticeships with a degree, graduating from Warwick University with a 2:1 in Software Engineering. She is now an ML Ops Engineer in Thales’s AI division, working on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) solutions. Her advice to jobseekers is that grades do not define your trajectory: curiosity, willingness to learn on the job and self-belief matter just as much.

Mansi opened her A-level results to grades she had not expected. Seven years on, she is an ML Ops Engineer, having built her career through apprenticeships, university study and a passion for building things to make a positive difference. She tells VERCIDA about what it means to redefine your path, finding the courage to keep going and why representation matters.

On the morning Mansi opened her A-level results, she had expected to do well. Instead, she received grades of CCDE, leaving her questioning what came next.

Seven years later, Mansi is an ML Ops Engineer at Thales. Along the way, she spent five and a half years balancing work and study across two apprenticeships, graduated with a 2:1 in Software Engineering from Warwick University, and helped lay the foundations for employee inclusion networks that have grown across the business. 

Her story is worth any jobseeker’s time because it rests on a simple idea: a set of grades do not define your trajectory.

The results that didn’t define her

What opened the door for her was her resilience. Despite not receiving the grades she expected, she had already completed entrance exams in pursuit of her dream of becoming an engineer. Her school profile was broad, her interests real, and at her interview she presented her EPQ, an extended research project she had chosen to lead herself, on technology in healthcare. That, she thinks, is what did it. Her initiative, personal projects, and genuine curiosity opened the door in a way grades alone would never have allowed.

She had wanted the apprenticeship route for a while. Thales engineers had come into her school to run STEM outreach and their paths stayed with her: the travel, the flexibility, the freedom to move between roles and solve different problems. The traditional university route was not the only way in and for her and it wasn’t what she had her heart set on.

Learning on the job

Mansi arrived at Thales fresh out of school, and the leap felt enormous. What changed her was the work and the people around it. An apprenticeship, she found, means talking to everyone: engineers, HR, project managers and other colleagues across the business. It helped begin her career with confidence, and taught her what engineering really is, which turned out to be very different from the version you meet at a school desk.

Her first posting was in avionics, a field she was excited to explore. She spent time in cockpit simulators learning about the different components of an aircraft and how they work. Testing those cockpits meant learning C++, one of the oldest and least forgiving programming languages, on the job. She started small, refactoring existing safety critical software line by line, before writing her own functions with her team’s support and eventually independently. 

“There was a lot to learn but, I really enjoyed the challenge and found it fun!”

Finding her thing at the AI frontier

In her third year of university, a module on image processing, where she enjoyed exploring different techniques used to alter and transform images and seeing the results of what she was doing, took hold of her. She chased it through her own late-night tutorials, did well in the assignments, and reached a simple conclusion: if she was good at it and loved it, that was the direction to go.

It led her to Thales’s new AI division, where she works on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) based solutions. She explains that RAG works like an advanced search system. When you ask a question, it retrieves the most relevant content from a collection of documents and provides that information to an AI model, which then generates a response in natural language, much like chatting with a chatbot.

Working at the edge of AI inside a company operating across the defence and aerospace sectors she says, is fast paced and exciting. With new AI tools being developed, she believes ways of working are evolving rapidly. What Mansi keeps returning to is the sense of purpose she finds in her work, helping solve challenges through innovative thinking and delivering real-world impact.

Representation matters

Away from engineering, Mansi describes herself as a Gujarati woman and the eldest daughter in her family, and she does not pretend that came without weight. She recognises that pursuing her ambitions has come with its own set of expectations. She speaks openly about the responsibility placed on women within her cultural community, particularly the expectation to build a family and simultaneously pursue a successful career. 

She often shares advice and encouragement with younger women and students in her community who are curious about engineering, one of the few people they know who has taken that path.

She has also observed that South Asian women remain underrepresented in engineering leadership roles and hopes that by continuing to progress in her own career, she can make those paths feel more visible and achievable for others. That aspiration sits naturally alongside something she carries from home: she was raised to value community, and the instinct to bring people together follows her into work.

There is a quieter, more personal thread running underneath, and it may be the most striking thing she says. Raised to value humility, Mansi also recognised a wider expectation placed on women to be modest about their achievements. Over the years, she found it could quietly silence her voice, making it harder to speak about her successes and put herself forward. Now, she's learning how to put herself forward without feeling like she's "too much."

“Your achievements aren’t there for bragging. They’re credibility, to show others what’s possible.”

Balance, honestly

Mansi became a homeowner on her own at twenty-four and she loves the independence. She is also honest that the hardest part of this stage of life is balance. As the eldest daughter in a family where responsibilities are often shared, she feels a strong sense of duty both to family and to her career.

She acknowledges that it is not always possible to give 100% in all areas in life. She says, “Some areas of life have to give”. When that happens, her answer is to prioritise what matters the most in that moment. Her antidote is community. A women’s  or a race, ethnicity and heritage network, is where people trade experiences and hold one another up.

Building what wasn’t there

When Mansi joined seven years ago, the few women in engineering were, as she puts it, dotted around. So, she and a handful of colleagues set about bringing them together. They ran workshops, built a case, and pitched to directors to fund a women’s network. The hardest part, she says, was the unglamorous bit: gathering the statistics as a newcomer who barely knew the business, learning how HR held its data, and standing up to present a case to directors when she was very new. She learned an enormous amount doing it.

The instinct to fix what is missing shows up again in a change she drove more recently. Whilst logging an absence on the company’s system, she realised there was no category that fitted a menstrual or hormonal health reason. She raised it with the women’s community, noticed it was a change that had been raised years ago, and took it to the head of HR, pushed it up to global system and it is now an option worldwide. It is something most women experience, she says, and it simply builds a more inclusive workplace.

Outside of work, Mansi supports students considering careers in engineering. Whether they're looking for advice on apprenticeships, careers or overcoming setbacks, she's happy to share her experiences and help where she can. Often, she finds the biggest barrier is not ability, but self-belief. She sees her role as helping people recognise their strengths, trust their capabilities and take the next step with confidence.

For anyone wondering if there’s a place for them

Ask her what she would say to someone wondering whether there is any place for her at a company like Thales, and the answer comes without hesitation. “Everyone’s skillset and lived experiences are so unique, and that’s where your strength lies” she says. “If you’re willing to keep learning on the job, there’s so much you can achieve.”

“Don’t let your past define, your future.”

As for what Thales is like to work for, the honest version rather than the brochure, her verdict is warm and specific. The people, she says, will help you, always; she has had mentors who opened doors, and the freedom to move between sites, departments and roles means a single job title is never the limit. Even if you don’t settle in one career, she says, you can move around until you find the one that fits.

And if she could tell her A-level self-one thing, on that nerve-wracking results morning, it would be short and certain.

“Follow your heart, and don’t underestimate yourself.”

“I achieved way more than I thought,” she says. “Stay open to learning and keep pushing yourself to grow. Most importantly, enjoy the journey, because that’s the part you’ll look back on and be the most proud of.”

Ready to write your own route in? Explore Thales’s apprenticeships and roles on VERCIDA.