Nqobile Dube - apprenticeship case study 

I started at iO1 during May of 2011 as a Software Development apprentice. Before I went ahead with my apprenticeship, I was actually already in university studying Computing. However, I felt that an apprenticeship would be a much better path to take on my journey towards a successful career. I liked the fact I would be learning and earning on the job, gaining more workplace experience than a graduate.

During my apprenticeship, myself and a fellow apprentice would build websites together for our customers. I completed my Level 3 Software Apprenticeship after one year, whilst working as a Deployment Engineer and Client Services Technical Lead. I continued on in this role up until 2014. My responsibilities included deploying Drupal code for all customers and maintaining the servers that hosted customer sites.

Between 2014-2015, I was a Pre-sales Consultant. This involved myself going into meet potential customers that had specific requirements for which I would provide my technical expertise.

Following this, in 2015 I became the Technical Services Manager at Invotra, managing two people in this team. We were, and still are, responsible for making sure our customer sites are always up and running, and that our internal delivery environments are continuously available for the Development and QA teams.

I have continued on in this role, however, recently in 2018 I was offered a fantastic opportunity to become part of a Senior Management team within Invotra. It is a massive challenge which I am excited to take on and I feel pleased that my hard work over the years has been recognised.

My long term goal is to be on the board of Invotra, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the future brings.