Aerospace Software Development Engineer

On an aerospace software development engineer apprenticeship course, you’ll help develop software to support the aerospace industry.

Aerospace software engineering is a highly specialised profession in which an apprentice creates, modifies, and updates aircraft control systems. This apprenticeship will need demonstrated coding abilities.

As an aerospace software development engineer, you will define, analyse, test, and modify software engineering artefacts across design, development, and in-service operations.

You will verify, test, and modify the software to satisfy its design criteria and related requirements. In addition, you will learn to use and comprehend engineering data and documents such as engineering requirements, specifications, designs, code, test specifications, and test scripts individually and in collaboration with a diverse team.

This apprenticeship’s requirements are designed to challenge you to your limits while offering chances for development. As a higher apprentice, you will work under appropriate supervision while accepting greater responsibility for the quality and accuracy of your work. You will be granted a bachelor’s degree upon completion of this apprenticeship.

What you’ll learn

On an aerospace software development engineer apprenticeship course, you’ll learn to:

• Investigate opportunities to comply with accepted standards while adhering to legal, quality, organisational, environmental, and health and safety standards.
• Methods and tools used to control the change and modification of software-related products via configuration management and software build processes.
• Create and use algorithms, including definition, design, and implementation, to accomplish desired functionality in software.
• Use traditional software production methods and the toolsets supplied to allow efficient development while using appropriate Engineering Operations and Toolsets.
• Use mathematics and associated toolkits to reason about software properties, such as safety and performance, using analytical methods (engineering mathematics).
• Make architectural decisions based on Systems Engineering principles to get the best solution over potentially conflicting system objectives.
• Develop software more quickly and reliably using “Modelling & Simulation” software and “Modelling” toolkits.
• Use systematic methods to identify and eliminate waste and inefficiencies in software development operations, ensuring process, resource, and budget optimisation.

Entry requirements

You’ll usually need:

• 4 or 5 GCSEs at grades 9 to 4 (A* to C) and A levels, or equivalent, for a degree apprenticeship.
• Apprentices without level 2 English and maths will need to achieve this before taking the end-point assessment.

Assessment methods

The End Point Assessment comprises two distinct assessment methods: 

• An Occupational Competence Validation Interview 
• Professional competence assessment 

Duration, level, subjects and potential salary upon completion

Apprenticeship standard

More information about the Level 6 Aerospace Software Development Engineer Apprenticeship standard can be found here.

Apprenticeship end point assessment

For more information about the End Point Assessment Process, please read the Institute of Apprenticeships’ information page.