Apprentice CSOT Support Analyst

UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

West Midlands (B15 2TT)

Closes in 20 days (Sunday 4 January 2026)

Posted on 15 December 2025

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Summary

The Core Systems Optimisation Team Service Desk handles everything from individual technical problems to system outages relating to the university’s core systems footprint. The apprentice will learn how to analyse new issues and requests. Taking phone calls from users, helping them in-person, using online live chat and our web-based contact form.

• Wage:

  £21,733 a year

  Check minimum wage rates (opens in new tab)

  Full time starting salary £21,733 per annum rising to £27,166 after 12 months service.

• Training course: Customer service practitioner (level 2)
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 7.2 hours per day.

  36 hours a week

• Start date:

  Monday 2 February 2026

• Duration:

  1 year 3 months

• Positions available:

  1

Work

Most of your apprenticeship is spent working. You’ll learn on the job by getting hands-on experience.

What you'll do at work

·       Providing first line support on all core systems related issues via all the Service Desk’s contact methods.

·       Ensuring all contact with users is recorded accurately in the IT Service Management tool.

·       Identifying trends within recent and ongoing issues by monitoring incoming incident records and collaborating with colleagues.

·       Utilising skills, experience, and documented knowledge to provide solutions to users for the majority of reported issues.

·       Accurately triage more complex or time-consuming issues to other CSOT support teams, by building a thorough understanding of our services and support teams.

·       Developing a broad understanding of the University’s organisational structure, business functions, strategic aims, and key stakeholders to accurately assess the impact of issues.

·       Participating in ITIL-based Incident and Problem Management in line with documented processes.

·       Occasionally carrying out remote desktop support to resolve minor issues.

·       Ensuring that technical solutions are documented within the IT Service Management tool for future reference.

·       Being an advocate for our users and escalate whenever CSOT support is falling below expected levels, to ensure issues are resolved in acceptable timescales and excellent customer service is delivered.

·       Contributing to the creation and maintenance of knowledge base articles, ensuring documentation is easy to follow, written in Plain English and tailored to the correct audience.

·       Any other duties that may reasonably be required in line with your position within CSOT or to help deliver excellent customer service.

·       Supports equality and values diversity, moderates own behaviour to avoid unfair discriminatory impact or bias on others.

·       You will be expected to engage fully with the University of Birmingham apprenticeship scheme, attending mandatory group days and contributing to the successful promotion of the scheme by representing your department in a positive manner.

Where you'll work

Edgbaston
Birmingham
West Midlands
B15 2TT

Training

Apprenticeships include time away from working for specialist training. You’ll study to gain professional knowledge and skills.

Training provider

HIT TRAINING LTD

Training course

Customer service practitioner (level 2)

Understanding apprenticeship levels (opens in new tab)

What you'll learn

Course contents

• Use a range of questioning skills, including listening and responding in a way that builds rapport, determines customer needs and expectations and achieves positive engagement and delivery.
• Depending on your job role and work environment: Use appropriate verbal and non-verbal communication skills, along with summarising language during face-to-face communications; and/or
• Depending on your job role and work environment: Use appropriate communication skills, along with reinforcement techniques (to confirm understanding) during non-facing customer interactions.
• Depending on your job role and work environment: Use an appropriate ‘tone of voice’ in all communications, including written and digital, that reflect the organisation’s brand.
• Provide clear explanations and offer options in order to help customers make choices that are mutually beneficial to both the customer and your organisation.
• Be able to organise yourself, prioritise your own workload/activity and work to meet deadlines.
• Demonstrate patience and calmness.
• Show you understand the customer’s point of view.
• Use appropriate sign-posting or resolution to meet your customers needs and manage expectations.
• Maintain informative communication during service recovery.

Training schedule

HIT training provide online training and on-site support. This will amount to on average 6 hours per week.

Requirements

Essential qualifications

GCSE in:

• English (grade 4)
• Maths (grade 4)

Share if you have other relevant qualifications and industry experience. The apprenticeship can be adjusted to reflect what you already know.

Skills

• Communication skills
• IT skills
• Attention to detail
• Organisation skills
• Customer care skills
• Problem solving skills
• Team working

About this employer

A world top 100 university and part of the prestigious Russell Group, the University of Birmingham makes important things happen. Delivering groundbreaking research and excellent research led teaching. People are at the heart of what we are and do. The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university. We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success. We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential. With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide-range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University. We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate. We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work. Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working. In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme. We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries. The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum, and botanical gardens.

https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/jobs/apprenticeships (opens in new tab)

Company benefits

https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/jobs/staff-benefits

Disability Confident

A fair proportion of interviews for this apprenticeship will be offered to applicants with a disability or long-term health condition. This includes non-visible disabilities and conditions.

You can choose to be considered for an interview under the Disability Confident scheme. You’ll need to meet the essential requirements to be considered for an interview.

After this apprenticeship

On completion of this apprenticeship, you may be able to progress into one of the following roles:

·       Support Analyst.
·       Functional Expert.

Ask a question

The contact for this apprenticeship is:

HIT TRAINING LTD

The reference code for this apprenticeship is VAC2000005123.

Apply now

Closes in 20 days (Sunday 4 January 2026)

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