Data Engineer Apprenticeship
West Midlands Combined Authority
West Midlands (B19 3SD)
Closes in 13 days (Thursday 16 July 2026)
Posted on 3 July 2026
Contents
Summary
Launch your career in data and technology.
Gain hands-on experience in data engineering, cloud technologies, automation and dashboards while studying for a Level 4 DevOps Engineer Apprenticeship. Work on real projects that improve transport and public services, with expert mentoring, training and career development opportunities.
- Wage
-
£26,761 a year
- Training course
- DevOps engineer (level 4)
- Hours
-
Monday - Friday, 9.00am - 5.00pm
36 hours 30 minutes a week
- Start date
-
Thursday 10 September 2026
- Duration
-
1 year 5 months
- Positions available
-
2
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
What you will be doing
- Support the development and maintenance of data engineering solutions that help shape transport and public service decisions across the West Midlands
- Learn how to collect, transform and automate data using modern data engineering techniques and cloud technologies, including AWS
- Assist with the production of dashboards and reporting that provide valuable insights for strategic and operational decision-making
- Help maintain data systems and contribute to improving the quality, accessibility and security of organisational data
- Support the collection, analysis and management of transport, planning, social and economic data
- Work alongside experienced data engineers and colleagues across the organisation, gaining practical experience on a wide range of projects
- Contribute to the development of data solutions that support regional strategies, investment decisions and service improvements
Where you'll work
16 Summer Lane
Birmingham
West Midlands
B19 3SD
Training
Apprenticeships include time away from working for specialist training. You’ll study to gain professional knowledge and skills.
Training provider
BPP PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION LIMITED
Training course
DevOps engineer (level 4)
Understanding apprenticeship levels (opens in new tab)
What you'll learn
Course contents
- Communicate credibly with technical and non-technical people at all levels, using a range of methods; e.g. ‘Show and Tell’ and ‘Demonstrations’.
- Work within different organisational cultures with both internal and external parties
- Translate user needs into deliverable tasks, writing clear, concise and unambiguous user stories that the whole team can understand.
- Initiate and facilitate knowledge sharing and technical collaboration
- Deploy immutable infrastructure
- Install, manage and troubleshoot monitoring tools
- Navigate and troubleshoot stateful distributed systems, in order to locate issues across the end-to-end service.
- Work in agile, multi-disciplinary delivery teams, taking a flexible, collaborative and pragmatic approach to delivering tasks.
- Application of a range of cloud security tools and techniques - e.g. threat modelling, vulnerability scanning, dependency checking, reducing attack surface area - incorporating these tools and techniques into the automated pipeline wherever possible.
- Assess identified and potential security threats and take appropriate action based on likelihood v impact.
- Employ a systematic approach to solving problems, using logic and hypotheses / experimentation to identify the source of issues.
- Automate tasks where it introduces improvements to the efficiency of business processes and reduces waste, considering the effort and cost of automation.
- Engage in productive pair/mob programming.
- Write tests and follow Test Driven Development discipline in various different contexts.
- Release automation and orchestration as part of a Continuous Integration workflow and Continuous Delivery pipeline, automating the delivery of code from source control to the end users.
- Invest in continuous learning, both your own development and others, ensuring learning activities dovetail with changing job requirements. Keep up with cutting edge.
- Code in a general purpose programming language.
- Specify cloud infrastructure in an infrastructure-as-code domain-specific language.
- Interpret logs and metrics data within the appropriate context to identify issues and make informed decisions.
- Writing code in such a way that makes merging easier and facilitates branching by abstraction - i.e. feature toggling.
- Application of lightweight modelling techniques, such as whiteboarding, in order to gain consensus as a team on evolving architecture.
- Incremental refactoring by applying small behaviour-preserving code changes to evolve the architecture.
- Communicate credibly with technical and non-technical people at all levels, using a range of methods; e.g. ‘Show and Tell’ and ‘Demonstrations’.
- Work within different organisational cultures with both internal and external parties
- Translate user needs into deliverable tasks, writing clear, concise and unambiguous user stories that the whole team can understand.
- Initiate and facilitate knowledge sharing and technical collaboration
- Deploy immutable infrastructure
- Install, manage and troubleshoot monitoring tools
- Navigate and troubleshoot stateful distributed systems, in order to locate issues across the end-to-end service.
- Work in agile, multi-disciplinary delivery teams, taking a flexible, collaborative and pragmatic approach to delivering tasks.
- Application of a range of cloud security tools and techniques - e.g. threat modelling, vulnerability scanning, dependency checking, reducing attack surface area - incorporating these tools and techniques into the automated pipeline wherever possible.
- Assess identified and potential security threats and take appropriate action based on likelihood v impact.
- Employ a systematic approach to solving problems, using logic and hypotheses / experimentation to identify the source of issues.
- Automate tasks where it introduces improvements to the efficiency of business processes and reduces waste, considering the effort and cost of automation.
- Engage in productive pair/mob programming.
- Write tests and follow Test Driven Development discipline in various different contexts.
- Release automation and orchestration as part of a Continuous Integration workflow and Continuous Delivery pipeline, automating the delivery of code from source control to the end users.
- Invest in continuous learning, both your own development and others, ensuring learning activities dovetail with changing job requirements. Keep up with cutting edge.
- Code in a general purpose programming language.
- Specify cloud infrastructure in an infrastructure-as-code domain-specific language.
- Interpret logs and metrics data within the appropriate context to identify issues and make informed decisions.
- Writing code in such a way that makes merging easier and facilitates branching by abstraction - i.e. feature toggling.
- Application of lightweight modelling techniques, such as whiteboarding, in order to gain consensus as a team on evolving architecture.
- Incremental refactoring by applying small behaviour-preserving code changes to evolve the architecture.
Training schedule
Requirements
Essential qualifications
GCSE in:
- English (grade Grade C/4+)
- Maths (grade Grade C/4+)
A relevant subject in:
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
- Problem solving skills
- Presentation skills
- Administrative skills
- Analytical skills
- Logical
- Team working
- Initiative
- Non judgemental
- Patience
About this employer
Combined Authorities exist to grow economies in their regions. They invest in projects across areas such as transport, skills and wellbeing. West Midlands Combined Authority was set up in 2016 to deliver an ambitious plan to drive inclusive economic growth in the West Midlands. Most services are delivered by our partners. Instead, we deliver plans and funding that unlock those services. We represent seven local authorities (Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull and Walsall) with a further 10 as non-constituent members. We’re headed by the Mayor of the West Midlands, Richard Parker. We’re committed to creating a better connected, more prosperous, fairer, greener, and healthier region. You’ll support us in doing this through exemplifying our values: be collaborative, be driven, be inclusive, be innovative.
https://www.wmca.org.uk/ (opens in new tab)
Company benefits
- For more information on our benefits, please visit the benefits page on our career site
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
Your earnings can increase over time with an apprenticeship. Find out about potential future pay (opens in new tab).
- The apprentice will have a strong foundation in data engineering and will have achieved a relevant level 4 qualification in this field, and will be able to pursue their next role within data engineering
Ask a question
The contact for this apprenticeship is:
BPP PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION LIMITED
The reference code for this apprenticeship is VAC2000040478.
Apply now
Closes in 13 days (Thursday 16 July 2026)
After signing in, you’ll apply for this apprenticeship on the company's website.