Featured Apprentice Story

Abdurahman is a Software Engineering Apprentice operating out of the Sounds Off-Product team based in Glasgow. Abdu has been involved in the development, go live and continual operational support (both in and out of hours) of several systems, those being: Google Radio Publisher, Podcast RSS System, Sounds Search Metadata Integration System and Content Metadata Integration.

Abdu has also taken part in numerous projects alongside his team, which is enabling the BBC to make significant improvements to the content they are providing to their partners and in turn bettering the organisations business relationships.

Throughout these projects Abdu has gained hands on experience with the full Software Development Life Cycle including gaining requirements to help clarify project vision and design; liaising with testers to learn how to test complex systems and assisting with queries; learning best practices of deploying high performing systems to ensure his work is always at a production grade.

When Abdu first joined the BBC, in his own words; “I knew very little”. Joining the organisation straight out of school, he required a lot of support from his team. Now he is able to tackle complex tasks solo or pair on an equal footing with many of the other engineers in his team. He has gained immense quantities of technical knowledge across the technical domains he has worked across and continually takes on significant pieces of work, the complexity of which is well above his role, never letting the title of Apprentice restrict him. He has showed passion and a keen interest to get involved with operational system support, proving his hunger for further career development

Alongside his substantial contributions to the team’s engineering work, Abdu has demonstrated a wide range of softer skills including helping organise the team away days to increase team morale; facilitating a wide range of team meetings enabling the team to conduct productive meta-conversations; hosting sessions to discuss both the general team approach as well as specific technical problems.

He has represented his team in BBC department wide meetings; reporting on the teams current progress and objectives. He has also been an integral part of the introduction of every cohort of software apprentices in Glasgow, ensuring they are settled in. Furthermore he created the Glasgow Technology and Product Group Apprentice’s Network in order to provide a space for apprentices to communicate and not feel siloed in their day-to-day work.

During personal development time, he has created various tools for his team in order to enhance their developer experience and allow for a more productive work environment. Outside of work he has begun giving back to the software ecosystem by making open source contributions to large open source software packages (such as the AWS Cloud Development Kit).

Abdu is also excelling at his academic studies. He is currently coaching seven international students at Glasgow University, enabling them to create a content based image retrieval and augmented reality mobile solution for a client. He is also, as part of his studies, attending weekly seminars run by engineers at JP Morgan to gain insight on different organisational approaches to solving software problems. He is bringing this knowledge back to his work in order to ensure that he and his team operate at the highest level possible. He is also attending weekly talks focussed on professional ethics and workplace-related social issues, to ensure he is well equipped for his working life. Abdu has built a powerful foundation for his career during his experience so far and proves to not only be enhancing his capabilities, but also those around him. He is proud of his growth so far, however he does not appear to be satisfied. Abdu is aspiring to carve a path for his successors in order for them to believe that “just because they are apprentices, does not mean they cannot operate at a level much greater than what their job title would suggest”.