Aerospace Engineering Degree Apprentices Review

Desk officer roles in engineering delivery teams. Working with front line command and/or industry to ensure aircraft safety and availability. Certification work, safety work, application of regulation, report writing. Moving around every six months gives a huge variety of experience in a myriad of job roles. This enables a variety of day to day activities to be experienced.

This is an area that could be better and is being worked on. The university is provided by a different organisation than who teach the first 3 years causing comms issues however these have now mostly been sorted. The work side is not fully structured which has benefits - whilst future placements are not decided too far in advance it enables you to determine what you want to do and have the flexibility to organise this yourself allowing you to take control of your own career.

When needed support, it is there. Our employer provides backing when required and tries to sort issues quickly. They provide a good example of what to do and when to do it and can offer guidance. The placement managers will change for each placement and these are the people who provide the best support and often have a profound impact on your apprentice and outlook of the job.

Our training provider goes above and beyond to support our university work. Whilst there are a number of common issues, the lecturers go above and beyond time and time again. They have time to talk through issues and the small class sizes (as opposed to full lecture halls) for the first two years is an incredible benefit.

The job role we are in requires logical thinking, application of some soft skills taught at university but rarely relies on hard engineering theory/equations. As we do not design components and act as the customer we need to understand in general the principles applied but not apply them ourselves. There is the potential for external placements which allow this to be implemented.

Yes

The variety of experiences you can gain whilst on the apprenticeship is unparalleled when compared with other companies (after speaking with these). However it should be noted that this is not a hands on or design apprenticeship- if this is what you want then apply to a Design Organisation. If you are happy to do more management opportunities, this is one of the best there is.