Summary
Turn your curiosity into a career. If you’re passionate about engineering, eager to learn, and looking for a degree apprenticeship that combines academic study with exciting on-the-job experience, we’d love to hear from you.
What you will do at work
As a Systems Engineering Apprentice, you will develop the technical knowledge, practical skills and professional behaviours needed to become a confident and capable engineer.
Working as part of our Systems Engineering team, you will support the delivery of systems and equipment solutions, ensuring projects are completed on time and within budget.
Your responsibilities may include:
- Supporting systems requirements and design activities
- Contributing to project reviews
- Participating in system testing and validation activities
- Assisting with engineering investigations and problem solving
- Visiting customer sites, platforms and installations to support surveys, trials and system deployment where required
- Working with experienced engineers on live projects
What You Will Learn:
Throughout the apprenticeship, you will gain experience and knowledge in:
- Professional engineering behaviours and industry best practice
- Understanding and working with complex engineering systems
- Different engineering roles and activities across live projects
- The Systems Engineering Lifecycle and key engineering processes
- Requirements capture, requirements management and system design techniques
- Systems engineering tools and methods
- Testing, integration, verification, validation and qualification (IVVQ) activities
- Structured and methodical approaches to problem solving and investigation
Training
You will study towards the BEng Applied Professional Engineering Degree Apprenticeship with The University of Warwick, following the Product Design and Development Engineer pathway.
The programme is delivered through a blended learning approach, combining:
- On-campus teaching (approximately 12 blocks of 3 days)
- Virtual coaching sessions
- Online learning resources
Programme structure:
This is a broad programme, designed to provide a strong multi-disciplinary engineering foundation prior to moving onto a more specialist pathway.
Years 1 and 2:
- Mechanical Engineering
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering
- Materials and Design
- Computational skills
Years 3 and 4:
- Progress onto the Design and Development Engineer specialist pathway
- Work based project
Throughout the four-year programme, you will combine university study with practical workplace experience, developing both academic knowledge and professional engineering skills. Aligned to the IET accreditation requirements, this degree will support those looking to become a Chartered Engineer in future.
Requirements and skills
Skills
- Communication skills
- IT skills
- Attention to detail
- Organisation skills
- Problem solving skills
- Administrative skills
- Number skills
- Analytical skills
- Logical
- Team working
Qualifications
- GCSE 5 GCSEs incl. Maths & English (A-C or 9-4) – essential
- A Level Maths and a further STEM subject (BB minimum of 112 UCAS points) – essential
About this employer
Together, we create the ingenious technological systems and innovations that impact and improve people’s lives every single day. Even if you haven’t heard the name Thales before, you’ve definitely benefited from our inventiveness. We reinvest 20% of our sales in Research & Development in the UK. Together we supply invention across 4 core areas: Aerospace, Space, Defence and Security, Digital Identity and Security.
After this apprenticeship
- Will qualify and be a permanent member of the team within the Thales business
Things to consider
Because of the work we do at Thales, all roles are subject to security requirements.
To be considered for this position, you must have the permanent right to work in the UK and be able to successfully complete and maintain UK Government security checks, including Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) screening and Security Clearance (SC), which is a government background check, before starting employment.
To be eligible for SC clearance, you will typically need to have lived in the UK continuously for the last five years. As part of the vetting process, you will be asked to provide evidence of your identity, right to work in the UK, any time spent overseas during the last five years, and your employment and/or education history.
In addition, this role supports a UK Eyes Only programme and is therefore subject to government-mandated nationality restrictions. To satisfy the security clearance requirements for access to highly sensitive information, applicants must have been British citizens from birth and must not hold any other nationality. This requirement is determined by the UK Government and is a condition of programme access rather than an employment preference.
For further details of the evidence required to apply for security clearance please follow this link – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-security-vetting-clearance-levels/national-security-vetting-clearance-levels.
Employee benefits
- 201 hours annual leave (plus a company day and bank holidays)
- 80 Hours Volunteering (first two years)
- Discount Portal
- Health Care Cash Plan