Apprentice Developer Position

I've been working for RedZebra for about a year now, and it's been going well. We've refactored a lot of code, fixed a massive amount of bugs and introduced features which blow our competitors out of the water. We're a small software house and at the moment there's only three of us; myself, my boss Richard and Darryl, the apprentice we took on earlier this year.

We're trying to grow and so after working out the figures decided that we are large and stable enough to add an additional developer to our team.

The word "apprentice" means different things to different people, so I am being careful when I'm throwing the word around. Graduate Apprentices have finished university in the last couple of months and are going to start a two or three year placement scheme with a company that will train them and give them a job for about 5 years after that. A step below that is the general apprentice who has just left college or is starting a new career along a new path.

We're looking for someone in the hybrid of both, someone who can absorb what I'm going to throw at them whilst not being a skip-the-hard-work Graduate. The government apprentice scheme we're recruiting under has its benefits and it's drawbacks; the scheme is really useful for us because its backed and part-funded by the government, but also difficult because the scheme has a number of prerequisites including that the apprentice must take a college course (the apprenticeship itself must be from a college), so they're away at college at least one day a week. The other problem is that we need someone who is a fantastic coder, and loves code itself. These kind of people are hard to find, and are often of the Graduate Apprentice level. They're aiming for a much higher salary and career, and honestly, at the moment, we simply cannot afford that kind of person. We can't offer a massive salary but I know what I'm going to teach them will hurtle them forward in their career by about 3 years. I'm going to throw them in at the deep end and they're going to love it. There are very few opportunities like this at this level.

If you think you or a friend would be interested, drop me an email or IM.