Software Engineeer Review

Designing, developing and maintaining software alongside full time engineers, with their help and guidance.

I have learnt a lot about enterprise software engineering practices, prioritisation, time management, documentation, engineering techniques etc. You gain a lot by having lots of access to developers with years of experience.

The programme is definitely tough, requiring a lot of hard work and time. However, completing projects and seeing them in the hands of users is incredibly rewarding, much more so than making software which is never used.

Many of the opportunities offered are self-managed so you definitely need to be proactive to get the most out of the experience. However your assigned contacts will always be keeping an eye on your progress to keep you engaged. The work side is significantly more organised than university, that is far more up to you.

There is plenty of support offered, with 3 different contacts explicitly assigned to you as an apprentice plus the support of your team.

There is support offered, however due to the size of cohorts it's a standard university experience. Some courses are apprentice specific and these get far more and better support.

So far I've learnt a lot more on the job than from the training provider. However I did have experience before joining the program so have not benefited as much from the first year of education as some of my colleagues.

Yes, there are on site facilities such as a gym as well as sports teams, cooking classes, a choir etc. which you can join. You can also make use of all of the university's extra-curricular opportunities as well.

Yes

You get to learn a lot from very experienced (But understanding and helpful) people, whilst also gaining experience with real, complex and interesting problem-solving.

Be confident in the interview process. They aren't necessarily looking for someone who has all the answers or already knows how to be a professional software engineer. They want someone with the right personality to be an effective learner who can grow into the role over the course.