Four former Ron Dearing UTC students are settling into trainee developer roles after smart tech company Sauce welcomed them to the world of work.
Alan Strauhs, Jake Morris, Sam Osborne and Ellis Calow, all 18, completed a three-month internship at Sauce over the summer and were all promoted to trainee developers as part of a 12-month programme.
If successful, they will then progress to junior software developer roles and continue their careers at the company, based in Hull’s Centre for Digital Innovation (C4DI) tech hub in the city’s Fruit Market.
Sauce is an award-winning business specialising in working with large, traditional companies as their digital partners, creating innovative solutions to key business challenges across multiple sectors to keep them ahead of the technology curve.
Alan, who excelled in Maths and Digital Technology at Ron Dearing UTC’s sixth form, is helping to write codes for apps at Sauce.
He said: “My job is going very well and I’ve learnt so much already. It’s very fast-paced and I’m working on real projects for clients.
“Ron Dearing UTC staff treated us as adults and the school replicates a professional working environment, which helped prepare us for work.
“Sauce is a great place to start my career and I hope I can stay. It’s a really good job to secure straight from sixth form and my colleagues provide great support.”
Jake, who also excelled in his Maths and Computer Science studies at Ron Dearing UTC, is involved in coding, quality assurance and testing apps at Sauce.
He said: “Sauce is a great environment to work in and we all work as a team.
“The Computer Science course I studied at Ron Dearing UTC was hands-on and I learnt a lot of skills which are helping in my work, including website and app development, coding, reviewing and testing. It helped me to appreciate user experience and user interface.
“Technology moves so quickly and can often become outdated. Working at Sauce means you work with the latest technology and you move with it all the time, which I enjoy.”
This is the first time Sauce, a Major Partner of Ron Dearing, has employed a group of students from the UTC and there are plans to offer additional students similar opportunities in the future as its team of more than 30 employees continues to grow.
Former student Lewis Taylor was also employed in a Support Developer role on a short-term contract at Sauce last year before moving on to university.
John Polling, Chief Technology Officer at Sauce, said: “The trainees have done so well so quickly and they’re already contributing to coding on real life projects for clients, which is really impressive and promising.
“The internship gave them chance to showcase their skills before we offered them all a 12-month traineeship.
“They’re all really keen and the fact they’ve all progressed so well gives us even more confidence for employing more students from Ron Dearing UTC in the future.”