Carolyn Ainsworth
Chief Engineer, National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)
Carolyn Ainsworth, Chief Engineer of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), was chosen as one of the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) Top 50 Women in Engineering 2024. She encourages women to embrace passion and continuous growth to stand out in their field.
What does the Top 50 Women in Engineering award mean to you?
It’s a great honour to be selected for one of these awards, especially looking back at some of the previous recipients who are a very inspirational group. It’s great that WES uses these awards to give recognition and promote the wide and varied achievements of female engineers across the whole range of engineering domains.
What advice would you give women looking to advance their engineering careers?
Try to find problems that interest and motivate you, and don’t be afraid to show your passion and enthusiasm for solving them. That will mean that you will stand out and be more effective. Be confident about your strengths, but don’t be afraid to acknowledge where you need to develop, and consciously work out the best way to do so. I have always regarded myself as a work in progress — there’s always something that I can improve upon.
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What motivates you as an engineer working for the NCSC?
NCSC’s mission is a great one — ‘Making the UK the safest place to live and work online’ — and that makes me proud and motivated to be part of the organisation. I work on cybersecurity for everything, from helping to protect any individual citizen from phishing emails right to producing the credentials that protect our most sensitive information from foreign adversaries. Cybersecurity is always evolving and changing, meaning that there is always something new to learn.
What are you most proud of in your career?
That’s a hard one because I’ve worked on a variety of different problems in my career — from being an aeronautical engineer to a cybersecurity specialist, all of which bring their own challenges and rewards. But I think the thing that makes me most proud is having built a brilliant team of engineers who provide the infrastructure and applications that NCSC needs to support its customers — not just the Government and Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) but businesses small and large, schools, universities and many more.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) provides a unified source of advice, guidance and support on cybersecurity and is part of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
