Engineering case study · non-confidential overview
Technical coordination and architecture ownership for migrating specialised flight-test systems into a secured corporate environment.
01 — Overview
Following Kopter’s integration into Leonardo, the flight-test data analysis environment had to transition from a locally managed and relatively open network to a secured corporate infrastructure.
I acted as the engineering team’s technical focal point throughout the migration, contributing to requirements definition, architecture decisions, stakeholder coordination, deployment and the continuing evolution of three segregated engineering networks.
02 — The challenge
Standard corporate workstations could not support every flight-test requirement. The team needed dedicated servers, engineering workstations, large storage systems and automated processing services while remaining separated from the main corporate network.
The migration therefore required a new operating model covering infrastructure architecture, system ownership, user onboarding, storage, cybersecurity compliance and cross-network data delivery.
03 — Scale
Implementation and continuous evolution over approximately 2.5 years, representing around 5–10% of my ongoing workload.
04 — My contribution
05 — Data-flow redesign
When the engineering environment was separated from the standard office network, existing data-delivery processes could no longer rely on direct access through one open network. I contributed to redesigning the workflow so the engineering team could continue receiving approved data through a compliant, automated path.
Flight-test data is generated and processed inside the segregated engineering environment.
Approved datasets are automatically uploaded to a Leonardo-managed cloud environment.
The files pass through the required security-scanning process.
Approved data is automatically transferred or made available to engineering-office users on the corporate side.
The flow is intentionally shown at a non-confidential level; internal addresses, credentials, firewall configurations, cloud names and security products are omitted.
06 — Outcomes
Three segregated engineering environments introduced successfully.
Specialised flight-test systems remained available under stricter corporate security requirements.
Automated data delivery was restored across separated network environments.
No major operational interruption during the migration.
A scalable process was established for onboarding users, servers and workstations.
A single technical focal point connected engineering users, IT, cybersecurity teams and consultants.
07 — What this project demonstrates
Infrastructure migration is an operating-model change as much as a technical deployment. The result was a practical bridge between engineering needs and specialist corporate expertise—technical enough to shape the solution, collaborative enough to keep it compliant and maintainable.