Redefining what a career as an engineer looks like

International Woman in Engineering Day

Two Nord-Lock Group team members share their insights for the next generation of women in engineering.

Andrea Granström and Gabriela Werner joined the Nord-Lock Group at the same time, in September of 2025. And while both are engineers, that’s pretty much where any similarities end.

Granström is a project manager at the Mattmar production facility for Nord-Lock washers in northern Sweden. Werner is a sales engineer for the Nord-Lock Group in Poland, based in the city of Katowice.

Granström and Werner are two of the engineers who are women that make key contributions to the Nord-Lock Group’s technology and operations every day. Spotlighting them and their work can inspire future women in engineering with the full breadth of the profession’s possibilities – a critical element in transforming the field and opening its career paths to everyone.

“It wasn’t like I had it in my head that I was going to be an engineer,” says Granström. “It almost felt like life just led me there.” Originally from the western part of Sweden’s Götaland region, she studied at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, earning a master’s degree in electrical engineering, and then gained experience in a variety of roles and industries.  

“Engineering is such a broad field. You can work with so many different things, many of which I honestly didn’t even know existed. I kept at it…and I simply found it fun and rewarding.”

Werner, meanwhile, credits being around engineers throughout her life, including her early years in southern Poland, as shaping a career path that began with the decision to attend the Silesian University of Technology and eventually earn a master’s degree in materials science and engineering.

“I grew up in a family with strong engineering traditions,” she explains. “My grandparents were engineers, as are my parents, siblings, and my husband. Growing up in an environment where technology and problem-solving were part of daily conversations naturally shaped my path and my interest in technical sciences.”

Where engineering meets business

Werner came to the Nord-Lock Group after more than a decade working in the industrial sector, including a focus on fasteners. With experience on both the sales and buyer sides of the table, she has invaluable insight into highly technical commercial processes, such as when suppliers and customers’ engineers collaborate to ensure components like bolting solutions meet complex specifications.       

“I was looking for a place that would allow me to fully utilize my technical background and years of experience in the fasteners industry,” says Werner. “The Nord-Lock Group, as a world leader in this field, was a natural and ideal direction for my career growth.”

Her work requires a combination of engineering knowledge and commercial skills, as well as flexibility and a continuous desire to learn. And Werner’s ability to discern that the solutions she supports are of the highest quality also helps. 

“The Nord-Lock Group creates top-tier products,” she explains, “so knowing that I stand behind a technology that can be trusted one hundred percent is highly motivating.”

“It’s about listening to others”

Granström’s interest in the Nord-Lock Group was piqued after a neighbor had praised it in a passing conversation. She had just moved to the part of Sweden where the Nord-Lock wedge-locking washers had been developed more than 40 years ago and are still manufactured. Soon, she was researching the company online, applying for a position at the main factory, and was hired as a project manager focusing on investment projects, such as adding a new machine or system to increase production and improve operations.

“Having a background in the engineering field gives you a really good understanding of the many different areas that you actually have to deal with as a project manager,” says Granström. “You work with so many different people.”

According to Granström, that engineering foundation is essential to how she collaborates in her role. “It’s about listening to others,” she says, “and really hearing what they’re saying, their experiences and their problems, and what they need help with, and then making solutions happen.”

Turning ideas into solutions

For Granström, the problem-solving essence of engineering makes it a wide, encompassing field to work in. “There are so many different ways to be a problem-solver,” she explains. “There are many different roles that require that kind of mindset.”

As a result, the field offers career freedom that most might not realize, which is the crux of Granström’s advice to young women considering engineering as a profession.

“You can carve out your own path and go wherever you want. It’s actually very broad and rewarding,” she says, “It doesn’t have to be so straight and narrow.”

And while Werner agrees that “modern engineering has many faces,” she notes that the most fulfilling aspect of being an engineer comes from turning technical expertise into tangible results. “What gives me the greatest satisfaction is the moment when engineering knowledge translates into real safety and reliability,” says Werner. 

Her advice to future women engineers highlights that even one of the most technical fields of them all values original thinking.

“Engineering is not just about numbers and blueprints,” she says, “above all, it is about creativity.”