Pilot program’s success leads to broader rotation opportunities
Cameron Sellers had been part of Sandia for two years when he was faced with the opportunity to participate in a two-year pilot rotation program for early-career engineers working in the Weapons Design and Assurance center.
“It was a bit of a risk,” Cameron said. “Typically, early-career mechanical engineers in nuclear deterrence programs focus deeply on mastering a single component or project rather than spreading their expertise across multiple areas.”
But Jeff Dabling, then-manager of a surety mechanisms team, knew that rotations would help his new employees onboard faster and gain valuable insight and skills while, at the same time, support other programs in his group with an extra pair of hands.
Having heard about various other rotation programs previously implemented at Sandia, Jeff and others researched lessons learned and best practices to develop the Mechanical Rotational Engineering Program, known as MechREP. Jeff wanted to create a similarly tailored, hands-on learning experience for mechanical engineers in his department, but he wanted MechREP to be more than rotations. He envisioned a people-focused development program with mentoring at its core.
“We started small with four engineers working on four projects, rotating every six months over two years,” Jeff said. “All the project leads involved with the rotations shared our vision of developing people and understood that mentoring was key to its success.”
Lucas Spies, another early-career participant, said joining the program was a “no-brainer.” As a newcomer to Sandia, he had no prior commitments or projects to risk, making the pilot an ideal opportunity to dive in and explore.
“The program greatly enhanced my onboarding experience,” Lucas said. “Integrating into the program was relatively easy since I was fresh out of college and still in that learning mode. It helped me get up to speed faster on how things work at Sandia, and, more specifically, on the mechanisms group.”
For both Cameron and Lucas, the program provided valuable opportunities to acquire new skills, deepen their knowledge, explore different areas, expand their professional networks and connect with mentors they still turn to for guidance today.
“Ultimately, the exposure to different areas helped me realize that I wanted to be a test engineer,” Cameron said. Since completing the pilot program, Cameron is glad he took the risk to gain broader experience and is thrilled to be a test engineer on the W93 Electrical Contact Stronglink Mechanism team.
Taking the program further
When Jeff launched the pilot, he approached senior managers across the center with a clear message: in about a year, he would evaluate whether the program was successful, and if so, he would seek approval to expand it centerwide.
The results spoke for themselves. Three of the four pilot participants secured roles aligned with their passions. Encouraged by this success, Jeff and his colleagues in management formed a steering committee to scale up the program. They added more projects, carefully matched engineers to those projects and developed a rotation schedule that balanced learning and project needs.
In June, MechREP expanded centerwide with nine engineers from multiple technical disciplines, 10 projects and three rotations lasting eight months each.
Jeff isn’t stopping there. The program now fosters a strong cohort model, creating a collaborative environment where participants build lasting connections. Beyond engineering, Jeff incorporated training focused on communication and customer engagement — skills critical to the engineers’ professional growth.