Our Spotlight on Super series highlights the SRC team members who help keep SRC a great a place to work and grow. For this installment, we sat down with Ahmad Althomali, a 4-year SRC employee who works on the design team at our Arizona Division.
Q: First off, where are you from? Where’s home?
AA: I grew up in a city called Yanbu in Saudi Arabia, which is a town on the Red Sea. I lived there until I graduated high school and then I moved to the US on a student visa. Originally my goal was just to learn the language then go back home to Saudi Arabia. I was in Philadelphia for about a year and then I got a scholarship to Northern Arizona University, so I moved to Arizona, and I’ve been here since. It’s funny – my dad’s best friend also graduated from NAU around 40 years ago, so that’s one of the reasons why I applied to NAU. All my family is still back in Saudi Arabia.
Q: What’s your role at SRC?
AA: I’m a CAD designer, which is sort of in the middle of engineering and production. We summarize the customers’ requirements into a 3D model, so the production team knows what they need to build for the customer – materials, dimensions, all that. I’ve been doing that for about three and a half years.
Q: What do you like about your job?
AA: Well, it’s never boring, which is nice. The drafting department is really involved with the coil production process, and we touch a lot of different parts of the company. The teamwork here is probably my favorite thing about working here. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been here, what your role is, there’s always someone that’s going to help you out.
Q: Have you held any other roles during your time with the company?
AA: I have. I originally joined as temp, working in the assembly department. I did that for a few months then I worked on our military products doing assembly, quality, testing, things like that.
Q: Have you always had an interest in that sort of work – the technical/mechanical side of things?
AA: For the most part – I went to school for mechanical engineering and graduated in 2018, and I wasn’t able to work right away because I was on a student visa, so I had to wait for my work permit and green card to come through, which took about six months. And then, once I did have everything I needed to work, COVID hit, so that made it tougher to find a job. But yes, I like working with my hands, working to help make things, all that.
Q: How did you come to work at SRC? What’s the story there?
AA: During the pandemic I was working at the Sky Harbor Airport as an operations manager on the refueling team for an airline, and one of the guys I worked with told me about this temp agency he’d been talking to. At that time, I didn’t even really know what a temp agency was, but I thought I’d give it a try. So, I put my resume in and, sure enough, they called me, and I ended up here.
Q: If you were talking to someone who is considering working for SRC, what would you want them to know about working here? What sort of experience might they expect?
AA: I would say this is a great place to work if you’re looking for somewhere with management that cares about the people. Everyone from the leadership team here all the way up to the president of the company, it feels like they’re there for you. It’s also a great place to work if you’re looking for a career that allows you to grow. The company is growing big-time and with that growth comes opportunities to advance in a career, and SRC is really good about growing its people.
Q: What about when you’re not at work? How do you like to spend your time?
AA: I enjoy going to the park with my wife and son, who just turned two. I try to spend as much time as I can with them during the week, because my wife is in nursing school, and she’s pretty tied up with clinicals on the weekend. Aside from that, I like to play video games – mainly Call of Duty – and I like to watch soccer too.
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