Apprenticeship to Engineer
Joined DVSA at 17 on an ICT apprenticeship — Java in production, Oracle training in London, and serverless Lambdas before most peers had shipped anything.
Problem
National systems don’t care that you’re early in your career. Production responsibility, customer issues via ServiceNow, and real uptime pressure arrived from day one.
System
Built and maintained Java 8/11 services with Dagger DI and meaningful JUnit coverage, shipped AWS Lambda with the Java runtime, and integrated REST APIs with MySQL and Oracle. Completed City & Guilds Level 3 qualifications, Java SE 8 Fundamentals, and internal upskilling — then kept supporting customers from logs and internal data when things broke.
Outcome
A production engineer’s instincts formed early: test discipline, cloud fluency, and respect for systems people depend on. Everything since — DVSA senior delivery and Made Tech client work — builds on that start.