Rail is for everyone – Magellan’s Asiya Jelani on closing the career visibility gap

Ask most people what a career in rail looks like, and they’ll likely picture a train driver, a signalling engineer or perhaps someone in a hi-vis jacket doing maintenance on a track. It’s an image that has barely shifted in decades, and it’s costing the industry its next generation of talent.

The truth is that rail is one of the most diverse career ecosystems in the UK. Lawyers, graphic designers, data scientists, customer experience strategists, marketers, software developers, the list goes on. If there’s a field you’re passionate about, there’s almost certainly a route into rail through it. But until we change the narrative, that remains one of the best-kept secrets in British industry.

A 200-year-old industry with a discovery problem

Rail has a rich and storied history. Two hundred years of innovation, infrastructure and national connectivity. Yet when Rail 200 brought together industry partners to think about the future, one challenge kept rising to the top: how do we attract the next generation?

At Magellan we got involved through our partnership with the National Skills Academy for Rail (NSAR) on the Routes into Rail platform. What started as a sponsorship conversation quickly became something much more meaningful. We invested our web team, our time and our expertise to help re-design and modernise the Routes into Rail website to engage younger people at all stages of their career development to showcase what rail can offer.

The rail workforce is one in need of younger talent. NSAR research shows that one third of the rail workforce is aged 50 and over, and up to 70,000 workers risk leaving through retirement or attrition by 2030.

Routes into Rail is designed to open doors. To show young people, particularly those at that pivotal 14-to-16-year-old crossroads, that rail isn’t a closed shop for a particular type of person. It’s a vibrant, growing industry that needs people who think differently.

The point isn’t that rail no longer needs technical expertise. It’s that rail is a whole economy — and young people deserve to know that.”

The visibility gap

Research suggests 26% of children as young as 13 begin forming serious ideas about their future careers. By the time they’re choosing A-levels, many pathways already feel fixed. That’s a narrow window, and right now, rail isn’t filling it.

Part of the problem is role models, or more accurately, the lack of them. I’ve done a lot of work with women who’ve gone into engineering careers, and many of them (40% according to the Royal Academy of Engineering Research) had a family member in the field who pointed them in that direction. They weren’t presented with engineering as an option; it found them through proximity. For the vast majority of young people who don’t have that connection, the options they imagine are limited to what they’ve seen represented – and rail rarely features.

I met a female engineer who told me that two women engineers visited her school when she was 13. That single encounter changed the course of her career. She went on to pursue engineering through an apprenticeship, a route she’d never have considered without that spark of recognition.

That’s the power of visibility. And it’s something rail can do far more of.

The rich tapestry of rail careers

One of the most persistent myths about rail is that it’s primarily a technical industry, heavy on engineering and operations, light on everything else.

However, think about what it takes to run a modern rail network. You need software engineers building the ticketing systems passengers use every day. You need data analysts interpreting passenger behaviour to improve services. You need sales, marketers and communications professionals telling the industry’s story and helping customers to buy rail journeys. You need customer experience designers rethinking what a seamless journey looks like. You need lawyers navigating contracts and regulation. You need HR teams building inclusive workplaces.

And yes, you still need the brilliant engineers, operations specialists and infrastructure experts who keep the trains running.

The point isn’t that it no longer needs technical expertise. It’s that rail is a whole economy – and young people deserve to know that.

Connecting learning to life

There’s a persistent disconnect between what young people study and where they can imagine themselves working. The educational pathway to a career can feel abstract, expensive and uncertain.

What Routes into Rail tries to do is bridge that gap. Not by making the academic journey sound easier than it is, but by showing what’s on the other side of it. What does a day in the life of a rail data analyst look like? What problems is a signalling engineer solving? What does a graduate in communications do in their first year at a transport technology company?

The message I want young people to hear is this: whatever kind of thinker you are, whatever subjects light you up, there is a version of rail that speaks to you.

For those drawn to creativity, design or communication, the industry’s growing focus on customer experience, digital transformation and brand is creating entirely new career spaces. Rail is also infrastructure; it’s how people get to work, to education, to family. It connects communities and underpins social mobility in ways that rarely get talked about. For young people who want to work on something that genuinely matters to everyday life, that’s a powerful story to tell.

The rail sector is also embracing digital transformation and starting to execute automation through AI, and will give young people a real world environment in which to work on AI at scale. This kind of AI-first adoption for the workplace will set young people up for their careers in rail on the right foot.

For young people to consider a career in rail, they need to be able to picture themselves in it.”

Making it cool – and making it real

There’s still an image problem, and the industry knows it. We’ve got to make rail more representative if we want to attract new talent. That might sound obvious, but it points to something real: perception shapes aspiration.

NSAR insights into the current workforce data of those working in rail shows there is still a way to go with increasing representation of genders, ethnicity and age diversity. For young people to consider a career in rail, they need to be able to picture themselves in it. That means diverse role models, not just in terms of gender and ethnicity, but in background, personality type and the kind of work they do.

It also means getting young people into rail environments, letting them feel what the work is really like, through things like work experience, school visits and industry open days. Nothing beats the moment when a 15-year-old walks into a control room or a software lab and thinks: actually, this is not what I expected. This is interesting.

What Magellan is doing

Our investment in Routes into Rail isn’t a marketing exercise. By the time this project is complete, we’ll have contributed the equivalent of £250,000 in skills, time and technology to build something that will serve the young people this industry needs to attract.

We did it because we believe in it. The story we’re telling about accessible careers, about the breadth of opportunity in rail, about investing in the next generation is one the whole industry needs to hear and repeat.

The invitation

Rail is at a crossroads. Great British Railways will create a unified national brand for the first time in a generation. It’s a moment to redefine what rail means to the public, and particularly to young people who are beginning to think about their futures.

The invitation is open. Whether you’re a creative, an analyst, an engineer, a communicator or someone who just hasn’t found their thing yet, rail has a place for you.