Software Engineering Degree Apprentice Review

Collaborate and learn both technical and soft skills from software engineers at Goldman Sachs. This includes coding individually and with peers, proactively reaching out and connecting with members from my own team as well as other teams to gain better understanding of problems and systems. I am also encouraged to talk directly with the business and take charge of projects and meetings by my team.

The learning never stops whether that be at university or in the workplace. The university constantly teaches me fundamental technical skills such as programming and software design as well as soft skills like public speaking, presentations and group coursework. In the workplace, I get to take my academic learning to a whole new level through applying it to real world projects and scenarios.

Having to balance a degree and work at the same time is challenging, however both Goldman Sachs and Queen Mary University do an excellent in supporting us. Even during online learning and remote work, our university lecturers and team managers are always available to have a chat and check in on how we are doing. Our managers especially recognise that our degree is our priority therefore will always appropriately scale the amount of work assigned to us.

Despite starting during the middle of a pandemic, the firm was well prepared to provide us with support to work from home. There was an organised set of induction events and support network from senior apprentices and colleagues. The university worked hard to coordinate online lectures and exams to go ahead as smoothly as possible too.

Goldman Sachs encourages me to always speak my thoughts and raise any concerns if there are ever any. The wide network of people I can speak to include my managers, colleagues, designated program mentors and fellow apprentices. The support for apprentices at the firm is incredibly strong and I feel like we are in a great position to take advantage of opportunities to succeed and not fear failure.

We are all designated mentors from the university side to liaise with us and our managers at work to make sure that we are thriving both academically and professionally. There are periodic checkpoints where we discuss the projects we are working on to make sure we are applying what we are learning at the university in the workplace and hitting the standards set out by the degree apprenticeship.

The university teaching provides a good foundation for us to excel from when we are at work. It does not matter if you have previous technical coding experience before or not, the university course will have you covered. Being able to further apply this in a practical way at work is invaluable to our understanding as we get to see the theories in action and learn from industry experts.

As apprentices, there are numerous networks and events which we are encouraged to get involved with. These events allow us to meet colleagues from all over the firm and ranging in seniority which allow us to hear from a wide variety of individuals and their experiences; people at the firm are very interested in hearing more about the apprenticeship!

Yes

I feel that apprenticeship program at Goldman Sachs has a lot of support from the firm and we are in a unique position to develop both as software engineers and people. The culture at the firm encourages people to take on challenges and leadership with certainty, no matter the level of experience, with the knowledge that your teammates will be there to provide their support.

This is going to sound obvious but do your research on the firm and especially the engineering projects and initiatives we are involved in. Do not feel afraid if you do not have any technical experience beforehand as that is what the university is for! The interviews are for finding out what draws you to engineering at Goldman Sachs.