Our Culture and Values

ARA is a unique SME with a passionate workforce of engineering and aerodynamic professionals. People are our most important asset and we strive for a truly inclusive organisation where our employees can bring their whole selves to work. They lie at the foundation of everything we do and our core values have been defined by them:

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

CSR initiatives are at the heart of our organisation and they ensure that our organisation operates in an ethical, sound and responsible manner. We actively work with local charities and social organisations through which we can make a sustainable difference to our community. We regularly run events aimed at raising money for employee-nominated charities, as well as running sports and social events to promote a lively atmosphere in the Company. Our organisation is committed to driving societal change and promoting environmental sustainability.

Training and Development

With our employees being our main asset, we are constantly reviewing our development and training opportunities to ensure we have a challenged and fulfilled workforce where they are all encouraged to progress within the organisation and fully utilising their talents to maximise the efficiency of the Company. We believe that providing development opportunities is important to support engagement and retention, enhance personal development and career progression, and essential to their wellbeing.  We strive to be an employer of choice by offering placements, apprenticeships, mentoring and staff development programmes to create a workplace where everyone can achieve their full potential. We also support professional accreditations to a number of professional institutions.

STEM Outreach Programmes

At ARA we are determined to develop the next generation of engineers, whether that is in producing scaled down aircraft models or driving experimental testing in our transonic wind tunnel. We regularly run STEM related events with a number of local schools and we also encourage our employees to sign up to be STEM representatives. They provide career advice, mentoring and are passionate about sharing their own professional journeys with young people/the next generation. Our goal is to raise awareness of different job opportunities available across STEM and to be part of encouraging securing the next generation of engineers.

Early Careers

We believe our success depends on investing in the talent we need to meet our clients’ requirements and our early careers members are the future of engineering. Because of this we are committed to provide full support including training and development courses for to individuals who can demonstrate they are as passionate about engineering as we are. We need their energy, skills and talent to help us enhance our innovation, build our future talent and stay ahead of our competition. Our apprenticeships normally last 4 years and they consist of both academic ‘ off-the-job’ learning at local colleges and structured ‘on-the-job’ learning and coaching, working alongside our experts.