On the move with Amruta Kalvit: One company, unlimited opportunity
How do you make the most of abundant tenacity and a graduate degree in electrical engineering? Amruta Kalvit found the answer within Leidos. From her first assignment as a junior onsite engineer for a power delivery project in the Northeast, Amruta hasn’t skipped a beat when it comes to building and diversifying her professional skills and taking on new challenges.
“I’m at a point in my career where all my experiences are coming together and elevating me to new levels of professional growth,” said Kalvit. “As a certified project manager, I get to collaborate with clients and fellow engineers to bring new project ideas to life.”
New challenges, new successes
Like many in the engineering field, Amruta has enjoyed a continuously engaging and intellectually challenging journey to get where she is today. Since joining Leidos over 10 years ago, she has routinely leaned into assignments, even when they were outside her comfort zone. Early in her career, as an electrical engineer with a brand new master’s degree, this mindset landed her with a team of protection and control (P&C) specialists in metro Detroit who trained her in substation design. Once the training was complete, Amruta was assigned to a utility staff augmentation role for a utility in Manchester, NH. Shortly after, due to unforeseen contractual changes, she was briefly left without an assignment. Her manager pointed her to an opportunity in Boston to support a new contract for transmission line and distribution (T&D) engineering with National Grid, a major northeastern electric utility.
“Transmission line engineering was a brand new discipline for me,” she said. “On top of that, I did not have the standard training in structural or civil engineering, so the learning curve was steep. Challenge accepted!”
On this new assignment, Amruta relied on a core group of Leidos transmission line specialists for mentoring and support – in parallel with executing the work. This was made more challenging by the fact that 100% of this knowledge transfer took place remotely.
“I was the only T&D engineer in the Boston office. My colleagues were in Florida,” she said. Ultimately, aided by online collaboration tools and endless enthusiasm and support from colleagues, Amruta completed the assignment and gained new expertise in T&D engineering.
After living in the Northeast for several years, Amruta was ready for a change and she decided that her next challenge would take her to a warmer climate. With this goal in mind, she tapped her recent T&D experience to pursue a new project – as an engineering consultant for Hawaiian Electric Company.
While supporting Hawaiian Electric, Amruta designed and engineered overhead and underground projects under several programs and initiatives aimed to help improve power system reliability on the Island of Oahu. After nearly four years of support for Hawaiian Electric, life circumstances intervened and Amruta left Leidos to relocate to the mainland. Despite being away from the company, Amruta maintained close-knit relationships with the Leidos team, and they thought of her first when a somewhat unexpected opportunity arose.
During the height of the COVID pandemic, Hawaiian Electric was seeking project management support for several renewable energy development interconnections on Oahu, Maui and Hawaii Island. The ability to work remotely was a departure from the typical on-site presence that Leidos was accustomed to in providing support to Hawaiian Electric – and everyone on the Leidos team knew the position was a perfect match for Amruta. Today, she supports Hawaiian Electric as a remote project manager from her home in Maryland.
Coming full circle
Throughout her professional journey, Amruta has developed a deep respect for those who provided her with guidance and support. As a result, she has a strong commitment to helping others explore new skills and flourish professionally. Informally, she mentors new engineers, both within Leidos and across her project teams. When possible, she also helps promote engineering talent outside of the work environment by serving as a mentor for high school robotics teams.
“I like to inspire other young engineers,” she said. “My early days with Leidos were successful because of the support I received from my colleagues. Today, my mission is to carry that forward and help others achieve success.”
As she reflects, Amruta is especially thankful for how she is able to bring her experience and influence to bear on the Leidos teams tackling technically complex engineering problems faced by their customers. “It’s exciting to manage people and projects, and to leverage my project management credentials and technical expertise to find new, more efficient ways to engage teams and drive successful project delivery.”
