The tech exposure you need for your big career break with BBD’s Graduate Programme

So, you’ve decided to pursue a career in IT. You worked hard through school to secure a spot at university in Computer Science, Informatics, Software Engineering or IT, and your ambition is to use your skills to create the next best tech solution that could rival the Microsofts and Amazons of the world.

There’s just one thing missing – your big industry break.

Making sure your breadth of knowledge is diverse enough to make you a versatile problem-solver, while still specific enough to make you an expert, takes a well-rounded environment that can point you – and keep you headed – in the right direction. A way companies are making this possible is through dedicated graduate programmes that help students assimilate into the real working world.

More than a Graduate Programme

BBD’s year-long Graduate Programme shapes you into a professional who can step into any team and deliver. The dedicated grad training team guides you through the year to ensure your transition to junior IT professional is not only seamless, but that you are given every opportunity to grow into a key member of your team, the company and the industry as a whole. BBD’s commitment throughout your career there is to help you grab every opportunity across different technologies, sectors and solutions so that you can make an impact not only on every team you’re a part of, but also for countless people using our software in their daily lives. As a tech agnostic company, graduates are exposed to a myriad of technologies and languages that are used across the software development lifecycle, as well as applicable to any and all solutions for even the most complex business problems they may encounter in their careers. Our Programme is broken down into four key learning areas, being deeper tech knowledge, individualised learning, project experience and learning through fun, with each area specially designed to help you become more tech savvy while developing your soft skills and networking with likeminded people, giving you all you need to thrive in the industry.

1. Deeper tech knowledge

Hosted through an in-house learning platform, the Programme “level-ups” are grouped by technology, meaning you are exposed not only to framework / language / methodology fundamentals, but the full spectrum of how the technology works and how to best apply it.

Within the C#- and Java-focused level-ups, you learn all about object-orientated programming, memory management functionality, testing and .NET Core / Spring fundamentals. Within the JavaScript level-up, you get a sense of syntax fundamentals, TypeScript, and Angular and React. This gives you a good foundation for the front-end engineering web level-up, which includes HTML and CSS fundamentals, graphics and scripting, and an introduction to JavaScript for web. This ensures you are equipped to build browser-based web solutions that are in line with cutting edge web application standards.

In the database level-up, you are then exposed to relational databases, SQL, data definition and manipulation concepts, and normalisation to equip you to understand and manage data stores that service large-scale enterprise software solutions.

Moving on from language and database frameworks, you are taught design concept fundamentals and design patterns in the systems design level-up, which also includes service design and architectural principles, giving you the chance to apply your framework know-how to actual designed solutions.

Security forms a massive and necessary part of software engineering and as such, our security level-up focuses on authentication, authorisation, OWASP principles and penetration testing fundamentals, which are put into practice through a group-on-group hackathon where each graduate group tries to compromise another’s system.

Finally, forming the forefront of where technology is headed, is the cloud level-up, where you are exposed to cloud fundamentals, cloud native development, containerisation and DevOps. In this level-up, you are also given the opportunity to become AWS or Azure certified, giving your abilities even more of an edge!

2. Individualised learning

BBD’s Graduate Programme is your opportunity to mould your career into whatever you want it to be. Your learning journey is your own – supported by what you need to achieve your personal technical and career goals. BBD’s dedicated graduate advisors help you define and set your goals, and then assist you along the road to achieving them, throughout the Programme and your career. Being a BBD Graduate also means you have unlimited access to valuable learning material and the chance to collaborate with leading industry experts within BBD’s ranks.

3. Project experience

When you join the BBD Graduate Programme, you are automatically placed in a project team as a junior software engineer, giving you hands-on experience from day one. With the chance to create real-world solutions in your primary language, being a part of an existing BBD team means you are exposed to team-based learning and collaborative work environments. Plus, each team is different, so the opportunity to try a new technology, methodology, or sector later on in your career is possible with BBD!

4. Learning through fun

In true BBD style, Grads play as hard as they work. Alongside Programme level-ups, team projects, deadlines and grappling with new challenges, the BBD Graduate Programme has hackathons, game jams, dedicated in-house tech talks, battle decks and guest lectures. These all make for a holistic and enriching experience for you from the moment you land in the Programme, ensuring you are given all the tools you need to thrive professionally, but also to network, build relationships, better your soft skills and truly carve out your place in the industry.

If you are a graduate looking to kickstart your career with a company making some serious waves in the tech industry, apply for a spot in BBD’s Graduate Programme today at bbdsoftware.com/grads.