Early Career Opportunities

SSTL coordinate a number of opportunities to students throughout the year:

• Work experience— one or two weeks
• Internships— up to three months
• Industrial Year placements

We have a generic work experience programme to ensure that students receive an overview of most aspects within engineering, including Systems Engineering, MCAD and Electronics. This will help students decide on which area of engineering they would like to study further.
Our internships and industrial placements offer more exposure to the company and the way we work, and an in depth knowledge of the particular area that the student is studying.

Please direct any queries you may have about our work placements here

Our Apprenticeship Programme allows Apprentices to develop an understanding and knowledge of either IT or Engineering. Both academically through day release at College and on the job training along with mentoring, in both technical and soft skills, all delivered by experienced people in SSTL

Engineering Apprenticeship Programme (3 years)
You will learn hands on experience across a range of engineering/manufacturing teams and responsibilities
as below:

• Assembly, Integration & Test (AIT)
• Production
• Composites Manufacturing
• Propulsion, Mechanisms and Power
• Mechanical

 IT Apprenticeship Programme (2 years)
You will develop an understanding and knowledge of 1st Line Technical Support for the IT service desk, providing support for internal users within SSTL such as:

• Preliminary investigation of all requests via telephone, email or remote admin tools, resolving or escalating as necessary using generic fault finding techniques.
• Installation of Software packages and registration of applications, using VM Mirage.
• Installation of IT Hardware.
• Building and Configuration of Computers.
• Regular review of escalated tickets to ensure they are maintaining SLA’s. 

At the end of both programmes you will be offered a position at SSTL and have the opportunity to continue onto the next level Apprenticeship if you are interested in studying further.

The programme lasts for 2 years and has two different paths:

Fixed Placement 
Focusing on one placement for the duration of the scheme to gain in depth knowledge and experience.

Rotational Placement
Three placements of eight months will be coordinated to gain a broader experience across different business areas and disciplines within the Space Industry. The goal of our rotational Graduate Training Programme is to gain an overall understanding of how the business works before deciding on a specific area or discipline to specialise in. Placements may include:

• Mission and System level Engineering
• Mechanical Engineering Design
• Electronics Engineering Design
• Optical Instrument Design, Build and Test
• Manufacturing, Assembly, Integration and Test
• Spacecraft Operations
• Project Management
• Commercial aspects including Business Development, Sales and Finance

On the job training and mentoring is provided by experienced SSTL staff, and this is combined with more formal training sessions and exercises, run both internally by SSTL staff and also by external trainers.