Materials engineers are the people who research, design and develop materials for products of many kinds. But their expertise lies in understanding the properties and behaviours of different substances, from raw materials to finished products.
As such she's worked with ceramics, chemicals, composites, glass, metals and plastics, polymers, rubber and textiles. It's this background that gives her the ability to combine or modify materials in different ways to improve the performance, durability and cost-effectiveness of products.
But what prompted that study path?
"I don't know really but I thought it was just really interesting. The engineering degree was very general for the first couple of years and then you can pick your particular stream so I ended up focusing on materials.
"I've been with Holden for the last 19 years and I started working in the company's foundry as a metallurgist," she said.
Ms Watt worked her way up to production supervisor and then area manager. She also clued up on environmental engineering and facilities management and landed in the engineering department in 2006.
She worked with the engineering validation team on the Chev Camaro and there was time with the splash integration group. That's the technical definition of saying she was involved with looking the impact mud and gravel had on vehicles. And she was lead development engineer for what was the last Australian-built V8, the VF II Commodore SS.
With experience working on everything from Army tanks to American police cars, tough four-wheel-drives and home-grown V8 muscle cars, her resume is a special one.
But she was definitely front and centre with the new Colorado as lead development engineer. Given this is a global vehicle - designed in Brazil and made in Thailand - she had a key role to make sure the vehicle was suited to the conditions peculiar to Australia and NZ.
"I was effectively the voice of Holden back to the 'homeroom' in Brazil to make sure Holden's requirements were met. You've got to remember that marketing expectations for any vehicle are different from country to country so it's important to have that link," she said.
The Colorado project involved regular trips to Brazil for her and others in the Holden team. While the suspension was being tuned for Australasian conditions her team was shuttling back and forth of Brazil to monitor the vehicle's development.
"The two key areas for us were driveability and refinement. Then other engineers headed to Thailand (where the ute is being made) to check on things happening over there. The variety of roads and the variety of ways the truck is used in our part of the world means the Colorado has to be versatile enough to handle everything thrown at it," she said.
Holden engineers took part in numerous development activities and drive events in Brazil in addition to completing local testing at Holden's Lang Lang proving ground in Victoria. In fact local testing totted up more than 100,000km on city and suburban roads, rural roads and 4x4 tracks in state forests.
Ms Watt's works may work in a highly specialised field and in a job the public probably perceives as being dominated by men. But she sees it differently.
"It's an interesting career path but I turn up for work every day like everyone else and just do my job. You earn the respect of people with the work you do and how you do it."
She said the breadth of experience working for a company like Holden offered was enormous.
"There's lots I could do but as long as it's interesting and challenging I'm happy to be there working on it."
Away from work the job's never too far removed. It's not unusual for the Watt family to head off on holiday in a new vehicle such as the Colorado. It gives Ms Watt a chance to assess first-hand the product she was a vital cog in helping create.
"It's been a great project to work on and we've had a lot of influence on the finished product. It's just great to know that there is a lot in this vehicle that was a direct result of our involvement."
