Meet the Topcon Ireland Team: Craig England

Next in the spotlight for our ‘Meet the Team’ blog series is Technical Sales and Support Engineer Craig England, who’s nearing his sixth year at Topcon Ireland.

Taking an unconventional route into Topcon, Craig started his career as a tractor engineer before moving to Western Australia. Now back on home soil in County Cork, Ireland, Craig finds himself helping customers get the best out of their equipment. Read to find out more.

Hi Craig! Can we start with a little about you and how you came to join Topcon?

I’m a qualified tractor mechanic – that's where I started my career, working in the role in Ireland for around five years before upping sticks and moving to Western Australia. This is where I encountered Topcon; when I left for Australia, my knowledge of the company was limited to having seen a couple of posters, but I was working as a mechanic for a dealer of Topcon kit, so I was really thrown into the deep end with it. I had a lot of conversations with the Topcon team in Australia as I cut my teeth on the equipment.

It was 2017 when, having recently married my wife, we both decided to move back to the family farm in Ireland. With my wife working on the farm, I went out looking for a job and was introduced to the Topcon team in Dublin. Six years later and I’m still here.

Can you tell us a little about your role and how it’s evolved since you joined Topcon?

So, I work on both the support and sales sides of the agriculture business, getting people set up with the technology they need and support them to get the best out of that technology.

Recently, I’ve seen the sales side of my role evolve a little in terms of who I’m working with. Nowadays, more often than not I’m working with dealers to help them supply more of their customers with Topcon technology and supporting them in recommending the right solutions for a customer’s specific situation. On the support side, I’m still very much in the thick of things with the actual end users.

What’s your favourite thing about working for Topcon?

It’s a really family-oriented company; this wasn’t something that I knew about Topcon before I started the job, but one of the first things they said to me, at the interview even, was that I would have their complete confidence and be able to work as flexibly as I like if I wanted to start a family after moving back to Ireland.

Everyone is also very understanding about the fact that I also live and work on the farm, and the hard commitments that come with that. It’s an understanding that the wider company and I have with our customers as well – farming isn’t 9 to 5 by any means, so we need to be ready to support our customers whenever someone needs my knowledge and experience, and Topcon allows us to take back any time we spend working out of hours.

How do you go above and beyond for customers?

Providing that out-of-hours and weekend support for customers is crucial. It can be as simple as a 5-minute phone call and the push of a couple of buttons, removing the need for them to worry their weekend away about how they’re going to get going on Monday morning.

In Ireland, a great deal of the farmers we work with are part-time farmers, who have full-time jobs alongside, so the only support they can access is after hours. Their requirements don’t fit into any one box, so there’s no substitute for a genuine understanding of their situation.

What does your life look like outside of work, any hobbies?

I’ve got three boys, ranging from one to four years old, so they take up plenty of my time. But I’m also a keen hill and country walker, profiting from the beautiful natural environment that we’ve got here in County Cork.

Keep up to date with everything Craig is up to by connecting with him on LinkedIn.