It’s National Engineers Week – a critical time for raising awareness and understanding about encouraging our youth and fostering interest in STEM fields to, one day, pursue engineering careers. And while every week is focused on engineering here at Hughes, this is a perfect time to highlight some of the accomplishments of our world-class engineering organization.

In the spirit of exciting the next generation of STEM leaders, here are the top five reasons Hughes engineers continue to lead the industry.

1. Category Creators – Hughes engineers invented the first commercial VSAT, making satellite connectivity affordable for businesses. Then, building on increasing demand, Hughes engineers invented a highly scalable satellite Internet service, making Internet access available to those unserved and underserved by terrestrial connectivity.
2. Patented Innovations – Hughes engineers have obtained more than 300 patents. From contributing to the DVB-S2X satellite transmission standard to developing the GMR-1 standard for IoT connectivity across different types of satellites (MSS and GEO), our engineers continuously innovate, making communications faster, more reliable and more efficient.
3. Communications Design Lab – Among multiple collaborations with engineering schools and universities, Hughes sponsors the communications lab at the University of Maryland, Clark School of Engineering. The lab enables students to gain real-world experience on telecom equipment such as signal generators, spectrum analyzers, and digital signal processors.
4. Innovation Awards – Hughes has its own in-house innovation awards program. The coveted accolade recognizes a select few Hughes engineers for their contributions to advancing not just the company’s technology, but the industry’s. For example, at the 2019 Innovation Awards in January, two teams were lauded: one that invented the technology behind making the OneWeb gateways capable of thousands of hand-offs per second, and one that created an app that makes it easy for consumers to track progress of their HughesNet installations.
5. Cultivating the Next Generation – With a thriving college intern and new grad program, Hughes has built a robust pipeline of engineering talent that gives new professionals the opportunity to work on real-world projects with leaders in the field. Moreover, HughesNet works closely with 4-H, the nation’s largest youth development organization, to help inspire and empower the next generation of leaders through STEM programs.

If you or someone you know is interested in a career in engineering, check out the available positions at Hughes for fulltime as well as college intern positions.