Recently, I completed my Level 4 DevOps Engineer Apprenticeship with Makers Academy (learning provider) and HMRC (His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs), achieving a distinction. I want to share my experience, both for my own reflection and to help people decide whether an apprenticeship in tech is right for them.
I’d like you to keep in mind that everyone’s experience is subject to their employer, and learning provider, so my point of view will not be the same as another person who has done an apprenticeship with a different learning provider and/or employer.
First of all, let’s cover the main reasons as to why you’d want to do an apprenticeship - particularly as someone who has just completed their A-Levels:
My motivation to do an apprenticeship stemmed from the fact that I felt that I had the skillset to take on an entry level Software or DevOps Engineering role. Additionally, considering the reasons I mentioned earlier contributed to my decision, particularly not having to take out student loans in order to attend university and instead earning a pretty good salary.
Just like applying to university, when applying for apprenticeships you want the best of the best. When looking through my options, Makers Academy stood out as one of the better learning providers because of their glowing reviews .
It’s also worth noting that Makers Academy is a recognised learning provider that is on the Government’s Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers , and received a Good rating in their last Ofsted inspection in 2022.
They are trusted by a range of organisations including Government Departments (HMRC and DWP are the two I know of), and other household names such as Tesco, British Gas, and HSBC.
Other reasons can be found throughout my Bootcamp and Placement experience.
I applied for tens of apprenticeships and junior positions across a range of organisations across the United Kingdom. Out of those, the two I was most successful with during the application process were HMRC and DWP - fortunately, these were the two I was most happy to receive an offer for due to being in the Civil Service and the benefits that come with that.
However, HMRC always had a slight edge over DWP for two reasons. HMRC’s job description provided a more detailed insight into the responsibilities of the role, as well as the projects I’d be working on. They also provided a list of technologies of which a few I was already comfortable with such as Linux, Git, Python, and Docker. This allowed me to paint a good picture of what I would be working on day to day and I decided that it was what I wanted.
The second reason was discovered later on in the application process, during the final interview. Out of all the interviews I had, my interview with HMRC was by far the best one that I had in terms of performance and experience (I’ll touch on this later).
After recollecting my application experience, I was shocked to realise that the entire process took somewhere between 3 to 4 months. Although, the process was quite drawn out, it was also the first time that HMRC had employed apprentices with Makers and I’m certain that was a contributing factor.
The first step was filling in an application with HMRC via Civil Service Jobs , after which I waited a few weeks before receiving an email notifying me of my progression to the next phase of recruitment, to be carried out by Makers.
A few weeks later, I was sent an email from Makers outlining the next steps of the process. This included completing a Ruby Codecademy course, a short Coderbyte assessment based on the course, and a telephone interview. What wasn’t originally mentioned in the email was the requirement to complete a questionnaire before booking the telephone interview; the questionnaire contained questions about why I wanted to do an apprenticeship in the software industry, and a couple of scenario based questions.
Once I was successful in completing those steps, I was able to book my interview with HMRC - one of, if not, the best interviews I’ve ever had because of how the interviewers treated me, this really boosted my confidence and is probably why I was able to do so well.
Roughly a week later, I received a provisional offer that took a month or so to materialise into an actual offer with my start date being a week later.
Disclaimer: The bootcamp structure may have changed
Makers apprenticeships are structured in a way that all the learning they deliver is front loaded, this is done to provide apprentices with enough knowledge to start contributing to their teams straight away. The learning is also delivered in a way that doesn’t expect prior knowledge from apprentices, making it suitable for pretty much anyone.
The bootcamp is 12 weeks long for Software Development apprentices and 18 weeks for DevOps Engineer apprentices. The first 10 weeks cover software development topics, from the basics of programming to object-oriented programming to web applications, pair programming, working in an agile team, and more. If you do the Software Development track, you then do a final project for the last two weeks before starting your placement.
As alluded to earlier, you do start off by learning Ruby but in the later weeks you are given the chance to learn a language more relevant to your placement - for me this was Python.
At this point, the DevOps Engineer apprentices break off into the DevOps course for 8 weeks, which covers DevOps topics such as cloud (AWS, though I believe this depends on the cohort), containerisation, reliability, and more. Similarly to the software development track, the course ends with a two week project before starting your placement.
The final project for both tracks is done as a team (subset of the cohort) and then demoed to the rest of the cohort and members of the organisations that apprentices are employed by.
Throughout the bootcamp, you are supported by coaches who run workshops where they teach tools and concepts. The coaches are supportive and will do their best to help you where they can. However, it is important to state that one of the key themes that underpins the bootcamp is learning how to learn thus the coaches will make sure you know how to help yourself when you get stuck instead of becoming reliant on them.
Overall, I really enjoyed the bootcamp, particularly the DevOps phase because it was where I started to feel challenged as I was already familiar with the topics taught in the Software Development phase from my own self-led learning and GCSE and A-Level Computer Science courses. While, I didn’t feel too challenged during the Software Development phase, it was a good opportunity to work with and help members of my cohort - after all the best way to consolidate your knowledge is by teaching it.
Not long before the end of the bootcamp I was told which team I would be in. On the first day of my placement, I was introduced to my team and team leads. I was already familiar with my manager as we had regular 1:1s during the bootcamp.
For the first couple of months I was assigned work that had been labelled for apprentices and newcomers until I had gained a good enough understanding of my team’s products and toolchains used to build and maintain them. Once, I had that fundamental understanding, I began working on regular work as any engineer on the team would. However, I was allowed to deviate from doing so if there was a ticket that would benefit my development or apprenticeship work.
Throughout the placement, I had regular meetings with my manager (weekly), team lead (weekly then fortnightly then monthly), and placement coach (bimonthly). These meetings made sure I was on track with my apprenticeship work, happy with how things were going, and able to ask questions about anything that I was unsure or concerned about.
Throughout my placement, I had to work on my portfolio, which would be used as a reference by Makers to determine whether I was ready for Gateway - essentially approval to start the project. I was able to work on this during the 20% of working hours that I could dedicate to my apprenticeship work, a legal requirement for employers to provide apprentices.
As I was getting closer to being ready for Gateway, Makers provided 1:1 sessions with a technical coach to prepare me for the two assessment methods, including their structure, going through any final changes that needed to be made to any supporting documents, and practice questions. Information about the assessment methods can be found here .
The assessment methods focus on 8 key areas:
Assessment Method 1 (AM1) is the ‘Project and Practical Assessment’. The project takes 12 weeks to complete (fixed time frame) with an additional week for completing the report and presentation, which are submitted prior to the assessment, in preparation for it. The practical assessment takes up to 3 hours, and requires you to cover the 8 assessed areas during the presentation with two questions per assessed area to cover anything that wasn’t spoken about. You are also required to show a code commit going through a CI/CD pipeline.
Assessment Method 2 (AM2) is the ‘Professional discussion’. This is a 1 hour discussion covering the same 8 assessed areas, with 1 question per assessed area with prompts to give more detail if necessary. You are allowed to use your portfolio as a reference because it is open book, however, I suggest summarising the points to a single page that can be used as a trigger for your memory.
AM1’s practical assessment is carried out once the project is complete and submitted - there’s a one month window after completion of the project where your assessment can take place. AM2 on the other hand, can be done at any point during the EPA (End Point Assessment) period i.e. from the start of the project.
My assessments were carried out by BCS, and as far as I am aware the structure may differ slightly between assessment boards, mainly in regards to when the assessments are carried out.
Did I make the right choice? Absolutely, there isn’t an ounce of regret for taking the path I did to kickstart my career.
Over the past two years, I have learnt so much and contributed so much more than I had anticipated. Much of that is owed to my team and line manager for supporting me throughout and ensuring that they did as much as they could to further my development. They, alongside everyone else that I’ve worked with at HMRC, have taught me so much not just about DevOps and software but also how to conduct myself as a professional, and for that I’ll be forever grateful regardless of where my journey takes me.
My apprenticeship was full of highlights, from the feedback on projects that I worked on, receiving a promotion, being a finalist in the UK IT Industry Awards Apprentice of the Year category, and achieving a distinction in my apprenticeship. As someone who has long struggled with impostor syndrome, and still does, these highlights remind me that I do deserve to be in the position that I’m in.
With that being said, I was going to include a section about how to be a good apprentice, or junior engineer but I don’t want this post to drag on so keep an eye out for post covering that in the near future.
Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, or would like to talk about whether an apprenticeship is right for you.