From Space Systems to Interior Experiences: Meet Ingrid

What is your role and how long have you worked at JLR?
I am currently a Lead Interior Experience and Wellbeing System Engineer at JLR, based in Budapest, and I have been with the company for almost three years. My role sits at the intersection of engineering, experience design, and human behaviour, focusing on how people interact with and feel inside our vehicles. What excites me most about my work is that it goes far beyond technical delivery. It is about shaping experiences that feel intuitive, thoughtful, and genuinely valuable in everyday life. Modern luxury is not only what you see, but how effortlessly systems work together in the background to support the person in the car, and I am proud to be part of creating that.

What is your background prior to JLR?
I spent fifteen years living in California, where I studied and began my engineering career. I completed my degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Irvine, with a strong focus on software driven systems, digital signal processing, control systems, and telecommunications. My education gave me a deep appreciation for how signals, data, and system logic come together to create intelligent behaviour, as well as a structured, systems level way of thinking. Alongside my studies, I worked as an Undergraduate Researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, contributing to projects involving signal processing and wearable sensing technologies for astronauts. After graduating, I joined Boeing as a Space Launch System Engineer, where I worked on next generation satellite communication systems in highly safety critical environments. These experiences shaped my technical discipline and clarity of thinking, while my creative mindset continued to draw me toward roles where engineering precision serves human experience. That balance is ultimately what led me to JLR.

Tell us about a typical day in your role?
A typical day in my role is centred around collaboration, alignment, and feature definition. I lead the definition of interior experience features and the intended behaviour from both a system and user perspective, then work closely with stakeholders across different vehicle systems to make those behaviours a reality. Much of my time is spent bringing together system owners from different domains to align on dependencies, constraints, and opportunities. I facilitate conversations, gather input, clarify requirements, and help teams work through trade offs so that multiple systems can work together seamlessly. I often act as the connective tissue between teams, ensuring that experience driven intent is translated into clear, achievable system behaviour. The goal is always the same: that despite the complexity behind the scenes, the result feels simple, intuitive, and premium for the customer.

What is the culture like at JLR Hungary?
The culture at JLR Hungary is open, collaborative, and deeply people focused. There is a strong sense of trust, which makes it easy to share ideas, ask questions, and challenge assumptions in a constructive way. Different perspectives are welcomed, and diversity of thought is genuinely valued as a strength. What I appreciate most is how connected people are across teams and roles. Collaboration feels natural rather than forced, and there is a shared belief that the best ideas emerge when people bring their full selves to the table. It is an environment where creativity and structured engineering coexist, and where growth is supported both professionally and personally.

What’s an exciting project that you’ve worked on?

Rather than pointing to one single standout project, what resonates with me most is the cumulative impact of many contributions coming together to shape the overall customer experience. In my role, it is often the thoughtful decisions, small refinements, and moments of close collaboration that make the biggest difference, and those are the achievements I value the most. One particularly rewarding area of work has been contributing to the evolution of in‑vehicle experiences, with a focus on making them more intuitive, flexible, and better connected within the wider digital ecosystem. This kind of work often involves navigating complex system interactions and aligning closely with multiple teams, which I genuinely enjoy. While I can’t go into too much detail, as this work relates to production‑intent initiatives on unreleased products, it’s been motivating to see how shared problem‑solving and strong teamwork can lead to meaningful, user‑centred improvements.

More recently, I’ve been involved in shaping early‑stage experiences that support a customer’s very first interaction with a vehicle. The aim is to help people explore key interior capabilities in a way that feels clear, engaging, and confidence‑building from the start. Again, I need to keep specifics high‑level due to the nature of the work, but I’m particularly excited about refining these ideas into high‑quality user experiences and exploring how to strike the right balance between clarity, simplicity, and impact at such an important moment in the customer journey.

What piece of advice would you give other women wanting to become Engineers?
My biggest piece of advice is not to wait until you feel fully prepared. You do not need to know everything to belong in engineering. Curiosity, courage, and the willingness to ask questions will take you much further than striving for perfection.
Engineering benefits enormously from different ways of thinking, and creativity is just as important as technical skill. Trust your perspective, speak up, and allow yourself to grow through doing. Many of the most meaningful solutions begin with a simple question asked at the right moment. Curiosity opens doors you didn’t even know were there.