Launching a Career

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Posted on August 13, 2024

Thomas Becnel

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#MyFirstJob is a series focused on recent graduates of the University of South Alabama.

When Coleman Davis enrolled at the University of South Alabama, he set his focus on a rocket club in the College of Engineering. Dr. Carlos Montalvo, an associate professor, handed him a debit card worth $150.

“So that was the starting point,” Davis said, laughing. “A hundred fifty dollars and the trust of Dr. Montalvo.”

Davis began recruiting students at South and preparing to enter the NASA University Student Launch Challenge in Huntsville. He and his classmates sent their first rocket nearly a mile into the sky. The following year, he was the project lead for a group that competed in the Spaceport America Cup in New Mexico.

That USA rocket, named “Helios,” was 12 feet long, weighed 75 pounds and reached a maximum speed of Mach 0.80. It rose to a height of nearly 10,000 feet and came within 700 feet of the team’s apogee, the highest point reached in the rocket’s flight.

“Our goal was to do a bunch of things we’d never done before,” he said. “For example, we had never done a two-stage rocket before, and we had never worked with any form of guidance, navigation and control (GNC) systems.” By the time he left, they had accomplished both.

Davis, 22, said the South project was a team effort. He makes a point of naming his teammates: Ethan Ott, Sam Jesse, Nathan Pierce, Matt Laski and Josiah Pimperl. 

He used his experience with SALT — the South Alabama Launch Team — to earn an internship with Airbus in Mobile. After graduation, he interviewed with a half-dozen tech companies in Huntsville before accepting a position with KBR, a large engineering firm and defense contractor, as a systems engineer.

Instead of joining an aerospace team focused on rockets, he will be working on the testing of different integrated air and missile defense systems.

“This job felt like a great place to grow as a young engineer,” he said. “I felt like I could also come in and use my past experience to immediately add value to the team.”

Some of his work is classified, but Davis can talk about other parts of his job. He will travel to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico this year to observe field tests. He’s learning as he goes along.

“A lot of the people I work with have been doing this kind of engineering for five years or more,” he said. “I’m definitely behind in that aspect. I definitely look at them with respect.”

One of his engineering mentors is his older brother, Carter, who works for Boeing in Huntsville. Davis stayed at his house while looking for an apartment in north Alabama. Brotherly advice included patience and perspective.

“’Speak up,’ he told me,” Davis said. “‘Try to contribute when you can.’”

Davis was born in Georgia but grew up in Baldwin County, where his father works in the restaurant business. One of his first teenage jobs was as a line cook in a restaurant kitchen.

“It taught me how to cook, how to multitask, how to work with people,” he said. “You can learn from anyone at any time.”

At Spanish Fort High School, he played on the basketball team. At South, he was part of a group of athletes who competed in all the intramural sports.

“I’m in the Intramural Hall of Fame,” he said, laughing again. “They induct two or three people each year.”

While a student at South, Davis worked as an assistant basketball coach for Spanish Fort High School. He’s already made plans to work with the basketball program at Huntsville High School. At KBR, he’s been recruited to play on the company softball team.

Davis works in a Huntsville office park just outside the Redstone Arsenal. He’s part of a team that conducts analysis on the testing of missile defense systems.

With his new job, along with basketball on the side, Davis is keeping busy. This is just the way he likes it.

“I’m never not doing anything,” he said. “I like being occupied. People were asking me, ‘Why don’t you take a month off to chill before starting work?’ But I would hate that.”

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