Mike's career path brought him from F1 to James Bond – and back to Cork

Carrigaline-based automotive engineer Mike Keane has quite a impressive track record over his star-studded career in the motor industry, over the past 20 years.

Formerly the head of engineering for the Williams F1 advanced engineering division, Mr Keane has also led vehicle programmes for iconic car companies such as Aston Martin, Land Rover and Jaguar.

One of his most high-profile projects was working on a stunt-double car for the Bond movie, Spectre.

But before that, during his time with the Williams F1 team, from February 2013 to December 2015, his work focused on high performance propulsion and vehicle design.

Keane worked with Williams F1 at its Oxfordshire headquarters, and told The Echo: “With the Williams Formula 1 team, most of the team don’t actually travel to the races. Most of the work happens back at base.

“Part of the job was that we would have interacted with a lot of racing drivers.”

Providing an insight into his working life while with Williams F1, Mr Keane paints a picture of an environment which requires mental clarity and sharpness.

“The most obvious thing is how hard the work is, or indeed how intense it is. It was a fantastic opportunity, in that you got to work on amazing cars and amazing projects.”

He said it was fantastic to be able to work with the calibre of technology that is involved in a Formula 1 team.

“They have very high levels of computing processing power and for simulation designs, they have a wind tunnel. Pretty much any component could be manufactured or fabricated on site.

“To have that sort of calibire of technology at your fingertips was fantastic,” he said.

One of the top projects that Keane recalls was working on a car for a James Bond movie.

He was, in fact, the design lead for the hybrid supercar project which featured in the 2015 James Bond film Spectre.

“It was a very exciting project. We knew that the supercar had to look exactly the same. But at the same time, it had to be able to drive down steps, do all the ramps and all of the stunts.”

They took the outer design of the Aston Martin car and effectively completely redesigned it on the inside.

“What was particularly crazy about that project was we went from getting the contract, to vehicles carrying out stunts, in just 11 weeks.

“I had design engineers and we were working basically 16-18 hours a day in teams to try and get that across the line,” he recalled.

“We had vehicles testing and doing stunts in the Austrian Alps 11 weeks after we got the contract. So that was very, very intense.” 

Today, Mr Keane is the founder and chief exetutive of Hibra Design, the Cork-based automotive engineering development company, established in 2022.

In the four years since its inception, Hibra Design has already secured work and programmes for public and private sector clients in Ireland, EU, the Middle East and South Africa.

The Cork company has been recognised with multiple industry awards, including Business Post Electric Vehicle Pioneer of Year 2025, 2024 National Start-Up Product and Manufacturing Gold Award and the 2023 Enterprise Ireland One To Watch award.

Last year Hibra Design developed Ireland’s first operational electric tractor, on a commission from Bord Na Móna.

“What was particularly exciting about that project was that there are a lot of companies out there who convert classic cars to electric.

But the challenge with the tractor was that we had to integrate it into the control system.”

He explained that a huge amount of the challenge of electrifying a tractor is in the software that you don’t actually see.

“It was just fantastic to be able to show that you can do this with these sort of vehicles ... to show that it is technically possible, but for the customer there is a ‘real use’ case as well.”

The whole process was very exciting, he said. “We showcased it at the Ploughing Championships last year and we got a great response.”

The ultimate spin-off, he said, was that Hibra got a huge amount of interest and publicity off the back of the electric tractor project. As a result, Hibra Design was shortlisted in the Western Europe regional finals of the Global Startup Awards.

The awards celebrate the people and organisations building the next generation of innovation across the world and finalists are selected by an expert jury sourced from across 154 countries.

With a view to what he hopes to achieve in the future with Hibra Design, Mr Keane is very much looking forward with great anticipation.

“The thing for us really is new vehicle design and vehicle system designs. There is a lot of interest coming our way.”

From working for the Williams Formula 1 team, to a major project on the James Bond car, and developing Ireland’s first operational electric tractor, the Carrigaline-based auto engineer Mike Keane has packed quite a lot into a career which spans two decades, writes John O’Shea

The path to power

The path to From an early age, the founder and chief executive of Hibra Design knew that he wanted to be a car designer or engineer.

Mike Keane attended Coventry University from 1997 - 2001, achieving a BEng (hons) in automotive engineering design.

“At that stage in Ireland, around 1997, we didn’t have an automotive specific course that you could do. You could to something like mechanical engineering, but there was nothing specific to automotive.”

Coventry was at the heart of the British automotive industry, he said.

“So it was straight into it, very much both in college and embedded in that industry in the midlands in the UK as well.”

Keane adds that, today, there are lots of different entry points to this very exciting area of engineering.

“The one thing I would say is that it is a big industry, which means that there are lots of different ways to be involved in it.

“So, I would know it very well from a technical point of view. But there are lots of different technical ways you could be involved in the industry — like mechanical engineering, aerodynamics, electrical software.

“I think from a technical point of view, software development, particularly around autonomous vehicles, that is what is coming down the line and there will be huge demand in those sort of areas.

“Even outside of that, there are lots of opportunities for people with a non-technical background to be involved in programme management or marketing. It is a very big industry and there are a lot of opportunities.”