If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the click - it's the sound of thoughts moving sequentially from one logical step to the next. Brains are working at a furious pace. There is no laughing or talking. Only an occassional whisper breaks the hush on the third floor of Hambleden House.

Technological problems are being solved. In the open-plan office heads are hidden behind partitions, everyone within the department at Logica Aldiscon on Lower Pembroke Street, Dublin, is focussed on developing new codes which will run enhanced telephone paging services.

This is where new telecommunications software products are designed. It's the cutting-edge of the business. Is it the sexiest job in the company? Rebecca Johnson smiles. "It's probably the hardest job in here," she says demurely. Yes, it's exciting, she agrees. There is a thrill in knowing that you are creating technology which will soon be used to create a product for use in modern everyday life.

"Messaging would be the biggest product that we have," she explains. A short message service allows brief messages to be exchanged between mobile telephones and elements in a fixed or mobile network.

Since Johnson started working with the company over two years ago, her interest and enthusiasm has grown. "I enjoy my work," she says. "Trying to find a better way to do something in telecommunications is quite relaxing. I find that I come in the next day sometimes with a new idea, and I'm eager to try it, because something will have just popped into my head at home, and that's because I've gone home and relaxed for the evening."

The work is marked by lots of responsibility early on, she says. "You get an awful lot of experience. You have to be quite organised. You have to have your mind very focussed all the time and be able to be multi-tasked as well. It's very, very methodical."

Johnson always wanted to do engineering. "I wasn't sure what type of engineering. What really pushed me into it was the fact that I would get a job at the end of studying."

After studying at Scoil Chriost Ri, an all-girls convent school in Cahir, Co Tipperary, she went to Dublin City University to do a B Sc in computer applications. The course was tough, "but it gets easier as you go along and you learn to deal with the work-load and that helps you to be organised and get used to meeting dealines."

In first year and second year, subjects included maths and physics. "If I hadn't done physics at school I would have found that very difficult . . . I did like the course. We had maths and science subjects and business subjects and pure computer subjects as well. It was all very new at the time. There was a lot of practical work, people help you along. There's an awful lot of help there."

Project work during her four years at DCU involved, she explains, "sitting down and coming up with an innovative product, designing it, coding it, testing it and then demonstrating it which is basically what you do in the work place." For example, in her third year, Johnson, over a four-month period, designed an interface for teaching children how to read.

Before graduating, she had already been recruited by Aldiscon. Today, she says, "the amount of jobs going is astounding, especially in telecommunications."

In her experience, women are in the minority both at college and in the workplace. However, she says, working in a male-dominated environment "is not an issue for me. It's not a matter of whether you're male or female but whether you're going to like what you're doing or be good at it. I was never very technical at school but college changes that - you develop the skills you need, you're taught how to think logically and you get better and better at solving problems."