⚙️ Level 4 DevOps Engineer – Course Outline (24 Months)

🗓️ Apprenticeship Overview

• Duration: 24 months (20 months training + ~4 months EPA) uk.indeed.com+6instituteforapprenticeships.org+6uk.indeed.com+6

• Funding Cap: £17,000–£18,000 bpp.com+2instituteforapprenticeships.org+2purplebeard.co.uk+2

• Standard Reference: ST0825 – DevOps Engineer (Institute for Apprenticeships) instituteforapprenticeships.org+1instituteforapprenticeships.org+1

📚 Curriculum Structure

1. Induction & Foundations (Months 1–2)

• Understanding DevOps philosophy: CI/CD, "you build it, you run it" culture

• Agile methodologies, team collaboration, pair/mob programming findapprenticeship.service.gov.uk+3instituteforapprenticeships.org+3findapprenticeshiptraining.apprenticeships.education.gov.uk+3

• Tools set-up: version control, CI environments, cloud basics purplebeard.co.uk

2. Core Knowledge & Technical Skills (Months 3–9)

• Programming: Python, Bash, and general-purpose languages

• Infrastructure-as-Code: Terraform or similar DSLs uk.indeed.com+15purplebeard.co.uk+15reddit.com+15

• CI/CD Pipelines: Building automated testing and deployment workflows reddit.com

• Containers & Orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes

• Cloud Provisioning: AWS, Azure, GCP fundamentals uk.indeed.com+1findapprenticeshiptraining.apprenticeships.education.gov.uk+1

• Security Practices: Securing data in transit/rest, SDLC integration findapprenticeshiptraining.apprenticeships.education.gov.uk

3. Infrastructure & Automation (Months 10–16)

• Automating deployments using APIs and scripting uk.indeed.com+3reddit.com+3uk.indeed.com+3

• Designing immutable and scalable architectures

• Monitoring: metrics, logging, alerting, and incident support instituteforapprenticeships.org+5findapprenticeshiptraining.apprenticeships.education.gov.uk+5instituteforapprenticeships.org+5

• Troubleshooting distributed systems and performance tuning

4. Collaboration, Culture & Continuous Improvement (Months 17–20)

• Agile teamwork, knowledge-sharing, pair programming purplebeard.co.uk

• Embracing blameless culture and iterative enhancement purplebeard.co.uk+2instituteforapprenticeships.org+2findapprenticeshiptraining.apprenticeships.education.gov.uk+2

• Professional behaviours: communication, ethics, proactive learning

5. EPA Preparation & Portfolio Development (Months 21–24)

• Building a synoptic project portfolio aligned to KSBs reddit.com+2reddit.com+2instituteforapprenticeships.org+2

• Mock practical assessment & professional discussion prep reddit.com+5academy4digital.com+5reddit.com+5

• Final exams: knowledge test, scenario evaluations, employer reference

🛠️ Functional Skills & Qualifications

• Level 2 Maths & English support built-in reddit.com+1purplebeard.co.uk+1

• Apprentices will earn a nationally recognised Level 4 qualification equivalent to HNC reddit.com+15instituteforapprenticeships.org+15findapprenticeship.service.gov.uk+15

👩‍💼 Workplace Integration & Learning

• 80% practical, on-the-job learning in live environments reddit.com+4qa.com+4bpp.com+4

• Exposure to real lifecycle work: production environments, CI/CD, containerisation, monitoring reddit.com+11findapprenticeship.service.gov.uk+11findapprenticeship.service.gov.uk+11

• Mentoring by senior engineers and structured progress reviews

✅ Outcomes & Career Prospects

Successful completion equips apprentices for roles such as:

• DevOps Engineer

• Automation / Platform Engineer

• Site Reliability Engineer

• Infrastructure Engineer