Meet Christèle, a verification and validation engineer at Airbus

Hear from Christèle

Christèle is a Verification and Validation engineer at Airbus. She discussed her professional journey, her current job and the challenges she has encountered, as well as what she finds most rewarding about her work. She also shared valuable advice for those who would like to work in the cybersecurity field.

Discover her interview below!

What is your professional journey? 

Hello, I’m Christele Duval.

I’m a Verification and Validation Engineer at Airbus Defence and Space Cyber. My background is in Industrial IT. I began my career at a service provider company, working on software engineering and industrial IT development projects. 

In 2007, I had my first assignment at EADS, which eventually led to my hiring. I started with development and then moved on to writing requirements. 

I joined Airbus Defence and Space Cyber in 2012 to write requirements for one of the company’s products. For the past eight years, I’ve been part of the validation team, focusing solely on validating the software and systems developed by Airbus Defence and Space Cyber. 

What is your job?

I've been working as a Verification and Validation Engineer for the past eight years. My job is to ensure that customer requirements - both functional, as well as safety and robustness requirements -  are properly met. 

I take the deliverables provided by the development and integration teams and verify that everything works correctly according to the customer’s expectations.

What do you appreciate the most about your job?

What makes this job interesting is that we deal with different operating systems, different codebases and different equipment.  This requires staying up to date and continuously learning, which makes the day-to-day work quite stimulating. 

It also involves working upstream, during the test plan design phase and downstream, during test plan execution to ensure that we deliver high-quality work. I also have the opportunity to see the product in use at the customer’s site and observe how end-users interact with the system. 

It’s very rewarding and motivating to see that our work has a real purpose and that we are building something that is actually used.

What challenges did you face when you entered the cybersecurity field?

The biggest challenge when I joined Airbus Defence and Space Cyber was my lack of background in  cybersecurity. It took some time to adapt and feel confident in my role.

I recall attending knowledge-sharing sessions with highly specialised professionals, where the level of expertise was so advanced that I sometimes left feeling overwhelmed, thinking “I’ll never be able to do that”.

Initially, I had some preconceived ideas about my role in cybersecurity, however I soon realised my responsibilities were different from what I had expected. My role in validation involves understanding key issues and ensuring that the work of architects and developers is coherent, functional and meets the customer’s needs. 

What advice would you give to people wishing to work in the cybersecurity domain?

My advice to those interested in cybersecurity is to take the leap and not set limits for themselves. The cybersecurity field is so vast that you will inevitably find a specialty that interests you and in which you can excel. It is also a constantly evolving field, so it’s important to stay motivated to keep learning and remain up to date with new developments.