Submarines and combat aircraft may be boys’ toys, but this time it’s women who are in charge.

Sue Sellers is an operations supervisor with Military Air Solutions at BAE Systems. She looks after a team of 50 operators on the Eurofighter Typhoon maintenance and upgrade programme. The Typhoon is the world’s most advanced swing-role combat aircraft.

Sellers has been with BAE Systems since 1995, when she began an apprenticeship with the company. She has since achieved a national certificate in electrical engineering and an NVQ level 3.

The excitement of her role comes from getting the aircraft out of the hangar and into the RAF fleet on the front-line. “You feel that sense of achievement every time you deliver,” she says.

Being a female at BAE is “quite surprisingly advantageous, especially when it comes to dealing with male colleagues.” Being more approachable enables her to “get that little bit extra out of the lads I’ve got working for me,” she says. “There’s no limit to what a female can do in the company.”

Rosalind Murray agrees that being female in a predominantly male environment has its advantages. She is the operations transformation manager at BAE Systems Submarine Solutions.

She is often the only female in meetings and brings a people-focused view. “You can bring quite a different approach,” she says. And as one of the few women around, she gets remembered.

Murray has a masters degree from the University of Cambridge in material science and metallurgy. Her job is to help reorganise working systems on the building of the Astute class submarine to increase productivity.

The change programme includes moving things closer to where people work, since up to 70 per cent of people’s time is spent going backwards and forwards to get things – big things.

And she is looking at every process within the operation to see if it will deliver the vision of a more efficient system, while getting it right the first time and having no accidents.

Murray enjoys the challenges of the job, which include the enormous physical scale of both the product and the facilities. “Submarines are pretty cool,” she says.

Times Recommends

• Inspirational leadership
• How to get a new job
• The reluctant CEO