Women in STEM at Boston Scientific: Aoife Carter and Claire O’Brien

Meet Aoife Carter and Claire O’Brien

Aoife and Claire entered STEM through different disciplines.

Aoife’s career developed through manufacturing engineering. Her interest began with a natural curiosity about how everyday products and systems worked. She did not begin with a fixed plan to become an engineering leader, but recognised that engineering suited her problem-solving ability and desire to understand how things were designed and operated.

Claire studied science before moving into quality assurance and later regulatory affairs. Rather than trying to map every future promotion, she concentrated on learning and performing well in each position. That approach gradually created opportunities to take on broader responsibilities and progress into regulatory leadership.

Their stories demonstrate that there is no single route into STEM leadership. Technical expertise matters, but so do adaptability, judgement, communication and the willingness to move beyond your original plan.

How Aoife Built a Career in Manufacturing Engineering

Aoife’s interest in engineering grew from wanting to understand how things worked. That curiosity eventually became a professional strength.

Manufacturing engineers work at the point where products, equipment, processes and people meet. They may improve production methods, introduce new equipment, resolve recurring technical problems or help a manufacturing operation deliver safely and consistently.

Aoife’s career also required her to make the transition from solving engineering problems herself to leading other people responsible for solving them.

That change can be difficult for technically experienced professionals. Success in an individual engineering role often comes from personal knowledge and direct problem-solving. Management requires a different contribution: setting priorities, creating clarity, developing people and accepting that you cannot personally control every technical detail.

Aoife discussed the self-doubt that accompanied her move into management. Mentors, experience and a more balanced view of her own performance helped her become more comfortable with the responsibility. Her story shows that uncertainty is not evidence that someone is unsuitable for leadership. It can be a normal response to taking on work that genuinely stretches them.

HERO’s Engineering Salary Guide Ireland 2026 also provides permanent salary benchmarks across manufacturing engineering, automation, project engineering and engineering management roles.

What Does a Manufacturing Engineering Manager Do?

A Manufacturing Engineering Manager normally leads the people and technical activities that support manufacturing equipment, processes and production performance.

The exact responsibilities depend on the organisation, but the role can involve equipment strategy, process improvement, technical project delivery, production support, capital investment and the development of engineering teams.

In a regulated medical-device environment, engineering decisions must also operate within established quality, validation and documentation systems.

The transition into this level of responsibility requires more than strong technical knowledge. Managers must communicate across production, quality, maintenance, R&D, validation and senior leadership. They also need to distinguish between problems they should solve personally and those that should be delegated to develop the team.

How Claire Progressed Into Regulatory Affairs

Claire’s career began with an interest in science. After completing a science degree, she moved into quality assurance before progressing into regulatory affairs.

Quality experience can provide a valuable foundation for regulatory work because it develops an understanding of controlled processes, documented evidence and the responsibilities involved in developing and manufacturing regulated products.

Regulatory affairs professionals help organisations understand and meet the requirements governing how medical products are developed, approved, changed and supplied. The work often requires collaboration with engineering, quality, clinical, R&D and commercial teams.

Claire’s progression did not depend on having every stage planned in advance. She describes an approach she calls micro-ambition: concentrating on contributing, learning and performing well in the role directly in front of you.

This does not mean having no ambition. It means allowing your career to develop through achievable steps rather than believing that you must predict the final destination from the beginning.

For professionals interested in this career area, HERO’s Regulatory Affairs Contracting Rate Guide Ireland 2026 provides further insight into specialist regulatory roles across Ireland’s life-sciences sector.

What Is Micro-Ambition?

Micro-ambition means focusing on the opportunity and responsibility directly in front of you rather than trying to control your entire career path.

A person using this approach might concentrate on becoming excellent in their current role, building a particular skill, taking responsibility for a project or developing a stronger professional network. Over time, those smaller achievements create experience and credibility. They may also reveal career options that were not visible at the beginning. Micro-ambition should not prevent long-term planning. It provides a practical way to keep progressing when the final destination remains uncertain.

Building Confidence When Moving Into Leadership

Confidence is often treated as something a person either has or does not have. In practice, professional confidence usually develops through preparation, experience and repeated exposure to difficult situations. Aoife’s move into engineering management and Claire’s progression into regulatory leadership both involved responsibilities that could not be mastered immediately. New leaders may worry that they should already know every answer. This can be especially difficult for professionals who built their reputation through technical expertise.

Leadership does not require pretending to know more than you do. It requires asking informed questions, bringing the correct people into the discussion and making decisions with the best available evidence. It also means becoming comfortable with feedback. A difficult meeting, unsuccessful application or project setback can feel personal, but it may contain information that strengthens the next decision. Claire discussed the value of resilience after missing out on an opportunity she wanted. Rather than treating the result as a final judgement on her ability, she used it as motivation to continue building her experience.

Disability Inclusion in Irish Workplaces

An inclusive workplace considers more than gender. It examines the physical, procedural and cultural barriers that may prevent people from accessing work or contributing fully.

The scale of the employment challenge remains significant. A Central Statistics Office analysis published in December 2025 found that 37.7% of working-age people whose long-lasting condition or difficulty affected them to a great extent were in employment in 2023. The remaining 62.3% were not in employment. The CSO cautions that the outcome varies according to the type and extent of the condition and the method used to define employment. Read the full CSO analysis of disability, income and employment in Ireland.

Inclusion requires practical action. Recruitment processes, workplace design, communication, technology and working arrangements can all create barriers when they are developed around only one assumed type of employee. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission explains that employers and prospective employers generally have a duty to consider reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities, unless doing so would impose a disproportionate burden. Depending on the circumstances, accommodation may involve adapting premises, changing working hours or distributing certain tasks differently. Read IHREC’s guidance on disability and work.

Boston Scientific’s disability-focused employee resource group, LEAD, Leadership, Education and Allies for Disabilities, works to raise awareness, create allies and support a workplace in which employees with disabilities can share experiences and resources. Boston Scientific describes LEAD as having chapters across its organisation and supporting accessibility in both physical and digital working environments.

The wider lesson for employers is that inclusion cannot depend solely on individual employees requesting help after encountering a barrier. Organisations should review how jobs are advertised, how interviews are conducted and how workplaces and technologies are designed.

Employers developing their approach can also read HERO’s Inclusive Hiring Strategies for Women in STEM Guide.

About Boston Scientific in Ireland

Boston Scientific develops and manufactures medical technologies used across a range of clinical specialties. Its official location information lists principal manufacturing facilities in Galway, Cork and Clonmel. The Clonmel operation is also identified as one of the company’s R&D Centres of Excellence.

These operations create career paths across manufacturing, engineering, research and development, quality, regulatory affairs, supply chain and related disciplines. Boston Scientific’s early-career offering includes internships, co-operative placements and rotational programmes designed to help graduates develop practical experience across departments and business functions. Availability and location vary by programme and recruitment period. The company context matters, but the most useful part of Aoife and Claire’s stories is not the employer name alone. It is how they built careers through curiosity, learning and a willingness to accept responsibility before they could be certain of the outcome.