October 22, 2026
From Ocean Engineering Student in USA to a NAPA Technical Consultant Summer Trainee in Finland
How the traineeship came about
Druw Bramlett is an Ocean Engineering student at Texas A&M University, and he found NAPA through an alumnus of the same program, now working at NAPA, who had passed the information on a trainee opportunity to their professor.
He already knew NAPA software as Texas A&M uses NAPA through a university partnership, and with the training videos provided, the Naval Architecture workflow was explained very simply. What stayed with him was the sense that it was only a glimpse of what the software could do. A traineeship looked like a way to learn as much naval architecture as possible while also traveling and working abroad.
Starting in Finland instead of the NAPA USA office
The placement in NAPA Finland came with the traineeship, and he took it. He had spent the previous summer on a study abroad program in Italy and loved it, so a northern European country he had never seen sounded like a fair trade.
What he knew about Finland: dark snowy winters, long sunny summer days, sauna and hockey. He also knew about the happiest-country-in-the-world ranking, although his Finnish friends made it clear early on that they do not spend much time on that label. The one thing that gave him pause was that this would be the longest he had ever been away from home in Texas.
Most trainees start out at their home country’s office. Druw started his in Helsinki, which meant learning several new things at once: Finnish culture, what people at NAPA mean by the NAPA Way, how to live on his own in a foreign country, and how to do the job well. The role came with real responsibility, which was the part he wanted. Learning from experienced naval architects in the same room, rather than over email, was a very insightful advancement.
Shipyard visits – Turku and Turkey
Customer training at a shipyard in Turkey
The NAPA Design Solutions Services team trains NAPA’s customers to use the software. Early in the summer, Druw was asked to join a main trainer on a session in a shipyard in Turkey, near Istanbul: partly to help where he could, partly to look for improvements to the training itself, and partly to learn how to run one later.
Each day covered new topics on how NAPA solves the problems of ship design, with exercises for each one. The most useful part for Druw was listening: which questions come up at which point in the training, and how an experienced trainer answers them. More than once a customer asked something sharp enough that he learned a capability of the software he had not known about. On the last night the group went out for traditional Turkish food and drinks, and the relationships built that week are the part he says he will always remember and cherish.
A shipyard visit to Meyer Turku
One of the most memorable moments of the traineeship summer is the Meyer Turku shipyard visit. NAPA works with the yard, and Druw was able to tour Legend of the Seas, one of the largest cruise ships to date. Seeing the processes behind assembly at that scale is difficult to convey to anyone who has not stood in it. The water park at the aft end is the part most people ask about. Seeing the wheelhouse was something particularly special: all the systems and data a crew must track, and NAPA in among them, doing its part to keep the vessel safe.
The Finnish Way
Druw remembers Finland and Helsinki from silence and think’s Finland is a very peaceful and relaxed country. He was not very sure about sauna, coming from the Texas heat he is used to. “But now, I love sauna.” The combination of city and nature is what he thinks makes Helsinki special, and there was more to do this summer than he had time for. He hopes to come back one day, for a NAPA User Meeting or a holiday.
He knew small talk was not a Finnish habit, but he did not expect the volume. In American cities he is used to raising his voice so the person next to him can hear. Without small talk, he thinks that makes conversation even more meaningful, and he has grown quite fond of the silence.
The office was the other surprise. Colleagues invited the trainees along to things from the first week. Playing pinball after work and playing floorball for the first time, both with other Naparians, are on his list of favorite memories from the summer, shipyards included.
His brother came to visit around the halfway mark. He noticed how much Druw had grown, and Druw was surprised how much Finnish habit he had picked up without realizing it.
Advice to students considering the same step
His answer to a student back home, studying what he studies and wondering whether to apply even if it means starting abroad right away, is short: apply. Being alone in a foreign country has been challenging in the ways anyone would expect, and the people around him made up the difference. There have been opportunities, shipyard visits among them, that he would not have had anywhere else, and he has learned things about ship design and about NAPA software that he will use for the rest of his career.
Interested in joining NAPA as a trainee?
Explore our open positions: https://jobs.napa.fi/. If there are no Trainee positions currently available, feel free to Connect with us and select Trainee @NAPA as your area of interest so you can stay updated on future openings.