“I was originally hired as an engineer, but I wound up in sales.”

You're giving a speech about something related to your job. You want to introduce your work history quickly so that the audience will understand why you're qualified to talk about this topic. Your history is that you were an engineer when you started working for your company, but now you are a salesperson. You explain this quickly by saying:

I was originally hired as an engineer, but I wound up in sales.

(something) originally (happened)

Use "originally" to describe what something was like at the beginning of a process:

The Internet was originally an American military project.

You use this when you want to contrast how something was at the start with how it is now or how it became at the end.

(someone) was hired as a (job title)

To be "hired" means to get a job. Here are some of the phrases that you can make with the word "hired"

• You tell who got the job this way: "she was hired".
• You tell what person or company gave the person a job this way: "hired by XYZ Corporation"
• You tell the job title that the person got in this way: "hired as the V.P. of sales"

(something) winds up (adjective / verb)

The way something "winds up" is the way that it is in the end.

We met in a bar in Mexico, kept in touch over email, and wound up getting married a few years later.

You usually use "___ wound up ___" when there are a lot of details to the story that you want to skip over because they're not important and take too long to tell.

in (a field)

You tell what field or industry you work in by saying that you are "in" that field or industry:

I'm in accounting.

Here are some examples of different fields that you can be "in":

• education (teachers, school principals)
• entertainment (actors, musicians, directors)
• software (programmers, testers, etc.)
• marketing (marketers for any company)
• sales (salespeople)
• hospitality (working in a hotel or on a cruise)
• accounting (accountants)