Question: What's it like to work at the RAF?

Ryan Durnall answered on 13 May 2024:

Hey, thanks for the question 🙂

I find it quite interesting. You can essentially have the career you want to have. If you want to travel all over the world, you can. If you want to settle down and have a more chilled time at home and still do really interesting work, you can do that too. It’s not like a stereotypical ‘military’ lifestyle, and I find it fairly relaxed where I currently work.

I find the work enjoyable and varied. As an aircraft engineer, there is always something new to fix or new problems to solve which keeps it interesting day to day. I’m really lucky where I currently work, as we only work 4 days per week, so I always have Friday, Saturday and Sunday to myself to do whatever I want.

Since I joined the RAF 9 years ago, I have completed courses and training in all kinds of subjects (a lot of them not even directly related to my job), travelled, and even got my pilots licence which was mostly paid for by the RAF. I personally enjoy it and think it’s a good career to get into. You never really have to worry about losing your job, and there’s plenty of benefits. And as I said, it’s not really like you would expect from a ‘military’ job. Nobody is shouting at you and you’re not doing assault courses or firing weapons every week! You can do more of that stuff if you want to, but it’s not really my thing so I tend to avoid it as much as possible!

Hope this answers your question. Please let me know if you’d like to know anything else.

Have a good week!