Software Development Engineer Apprentice Review
at Amazon
Degree Apprenticeship
Software Engineering
Shoreditch, London, UK
Review Submitted: April 2025
Overall Rating
3.3 /5
The Overall Rating is the average of all the ratings given in each category. We take those individual ratings and combine them into one final score!
3/5
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Overview of Role
5/5
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Skills Development
2.8/5
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Structure and Support
Overview of Role
Please give an overview of your role and what this involves on a day-to-day basis:
4/5
Daily standup, Weekly meetings and then finding time to work on project work. Check slack frequently. Unpaid lunch hour is a good time to interact with your coworkers and get to know them. Often go down for after work drinks on a Thursday and other events around the office maybe once a month.
To what extent do you enjoy your programme?
2/5
If it was all employer based it would be really good. However we have to endure the training provider and that brings the score down massively. QA is shocking and the communication from QA to the apprentice team to managers or apprentices is sorely lacking. Usually I only find out information from other apprentices so make sure you make friends with fellow apprentices or you'll always be out of the loop
Skills Development
Have you learnt any new skills or developed existing skills?
5/5
I learnt quite a few new skills within work including a whole new language and all the things connected with that. I also learnt a lot of best practices from my team and how the world of work works. We have L&BC (Learn and Be Curious - one of the leadership principles) days where we take time off work to learn new skills helpful to Amazon.
Structure and Support
How well organised/structured is your programme?
1/5
Most of the stuff learnt within the programme isn't actually useful and some of it is so basic that I've done it before at high school and then did it again at college and now I'm doing it again at uni, I'm meant to learn things not do the basics. At least we are given 20% of the time to work on it if not more.
How much support do you receive from your employer?
5/5
Amazon as an apprentice employer is so amazing and I receive quite a lot of support. It wavers once you get to the apprentice team but that's partly because they hate some of us. Manager milage may vary though as I've heard some managers aren't as supportive as mine have been. Most managers especially the ones that go through your whole apprentice journey with you are usually vetted and do a great job at supporting but if you're constantly changing managers this may not be the case.
How much support do you receive from your training provider when working towards your qualifications?
2/5
You can ask for support and you'll get monthly reminders from your skills coach. Plus you get a termly (usually) meeting to go through a document that's the most boring meeting on earth but if you need support that would be a good time to bring it up. They also have the ACE team should you need more 1:1 support or something. The tutors are hit and miss (Although big up Matt Phelan the best one there, always goes above and beyond) and the draft feedback can be really amazing or shockingly bad and that continues to their marking.
How well do you feel that your qualification (through your training provider) helps you to perform better in your role?
1/5
It has no bearing on my role entirely. Except maybe the software specific modules but even then they are the basics, you'll be doing much more advanced stuff than that in your work life. The programme doesn't cover data structures or anything useful really.
Are there extra-curricular activities to get involved in at your work? (For example, any social activities, sports teams, or even professional networking events.)
5/5
Beechwood is just downstairs and you get a discount so lots of people will hang out there. There are events sporadically around the team or office and the townhall is every quarter and that's a social event as well as informative for your team. Also there's no judgement on if you're there or not and whether you drink or not everyone just gets along.
Recommendations & Advice
Would you recommend Amazon to a friend?
Yes
Why?
It's a great place to work, while it's not the best FAANG company by a long stretch it's still great from the work side. Although be careful that you might end up in a team where the work you do seems meaningless or not passionate to you but you'll get the option to move nearer the end of the programme
What tips or advice would you give to others applying to Amazon?
Try your best and make sure you're interacting with the interviews and group activities to show yourself off
