Mentors nine women re-entering engineering roles
Mariana Silva is a mechanical engineer from São Paulo with twelve years of product design and manufacturing experience. She arrived in Ireland in 2022 through a Critical Skills permit and spent eighteen months navigating the Engineers Ireland accreditation process — a process she describes as opaque, exhausting, and designed without international applicants in mind.
Once accredited, she began taking on mentees through DGS. Her first mentee was an electrical engineer from Ukraine. Then a civil engineer from Nigeria. Then a structural engineer from Georgia.
Mariana's approach is practical. She does not offer emotional support — she offers maps. A checklist for Engineers Ireland accreditation. A list of which Irish engineering firms have international hiring experience. A template covering letter that addresses the Irish market's unstated preferences.
Nine women have been through her informal programme. Six are now in engineering or technical roles. Two are in advanced accreditation stages. One, she says, "is better at this than I was and will be running her own programme within a year."
Mariana now speaks at DGS employer sessions on hiring internationally qualified engineers. She is not employed to do this. She just turns up.