Michael Carruthers initially started at Ferranti on the shop floor; work which was interrupted by National Service when he trained as a pilot on Mosquito aircraft. He returned to Ferranti and worked as an engineer in the Transformer Drawing Office. After the closure of the Transformer Division, Carruthers transferred across to Ferranti Container Handling Ltd and eventually was appointed as a Project Manager at Ferranti-Thomson Sonar Systems where he worked until he retired.