Jonathan Lee

Tell us a bit about yourself – What is your current role? What other roles/areas have you worked in?

Hey! I’m Jono, Senior Materials Engineer within the Materials Technology team. I’m the subject matter expert when it comes to substance compliance at ResMed. Part of my role is to ensure that all our products which we sell across the globe are compliant to the relevant substance regulations in the region (e.g. EU MDR, Prop 65, RoHS, REACH, etc). This helps to ensure that our products are safe for our users and for the environment. Previously, I worked as a materials engineer at a digital printing R&D facility and studied a double degree at UNSW (B. Materials Science/M. Biomedical Eng).

As a child what did you want to be when you grew up?

As a child, I always envisioned to follow my father’s footsteps and to become an engineer of some form. I was always naturally curious and loved anything hands on – whether that was building lego models, doing tool work with my Dad in the backyard, playing sports or chess.

Were you always destined for a STEM career?

Even as a kid, I was always curious and had a strong interest in science and engineering. I can recall even in Montessori (early kindergarten), my favourite aspects were maths, lego building, carpentry and basically anything hands-on. This continued all the way through high school where I focused pretty heavily in the maths/science area. I loved that answers were typically black and white and logically easier to follow (compared to subjects like English which I always felt were marked a bit subjectively). Additionally – the practical experiments we did in class were always lots of fun.

What is your favourite part of your job?

Picking out one favourite is so hard! If I had to narrow it down to three favourite parts of my job – the first would be knowing that I’m able to positively impact many millions of peoples lives through ensuring the safe use of materials in ResMed products. The second would be that because I am a core SME to the business, the exposure I get to such a wide variety of products (both masks and devices) is really exciting. As I have input into material selection, I often get an early glimpse as to new and upcoming materials to be used in our latest designs. Lastly, the failure analysis investigation work I sometimes get involved in can be quite challenging and technically very interesting – particularly as we work in a relatively niche aspect of Materials Engineering.

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

Outside of work I’m very active and a jack of all trades so to speak. I do competitive Cheerleading, Acro-yoga, numerous styles of dance (rumba, swing and salsa), photography (as a side gig) and I’m a black belt in Kyokushin full contact karate. When I’m not being active, I’m a pretty keen gamer, having built my own PC as well as tech-ing my house out with home automation.

What is something you know now that you wish you could tell your younger self?

As a strong advocate of FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early), I would encourage my younger self to really understand their finances and to get into investing early on. I think making sure you set yourself up early can make a huge difference with how the rest of your life turns out and it’s something lots of young adults don’t focus or think about much early on.

Are you an early bird or a night owl?

Definitely a night owl. I rarely sleep before midnight and I find a sense of peace and calm in those very late hours of the night. I find my most productive hours are between 12am-2am.

Would you rather have a completely automated home or a self-driving car?

As a massive tech lover, I would have to say a completely automated home is my dream. I’m already heavily invested into smart devices (automated lights, sensors, etc). Having a completely automated home would be a dream!

Would you rather go 500 years into the future or 500 years into the past?

100% would prefer to go 500 years into the future. Technology has been developing at such a fast rate – particularly in the past 20 years. I can’t imagine how cool some of the technology will be in the future.