Sky Betting & Gaming sees the arrival of 27 new technology graduate employees

Sky Betting & Gaming has welcomed 27 new technology graduate employees at Wellington Place in Leeds this week, to mark the start of its new Software Academy.

An average of £60k has been invested in each placement, in order to acquire talented graduates from across the UK into full-time paid employment in the North.

The scheme offers one of the most competitive starter salaries and packages in the digital sector and this year, retention of home-grown employees was high, with only four of the intake of coming from universities outside of the North.

Just under 70% of the graduates came from universities in Yorkshire, including Hull University, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds University, Sheffield University, Sheffield Hallam University and Bradford University.

Matt Hughan, head of recruitment at Sky Betting & Gaming, said: “We’re committed to Yorkshire and have been able to recruit at record rates here over the last 12 months.

“By offering such high quality placements, we’ve not only been able to hold on to home grown graduates from our local universities, but also to attract those from further afield.”

The programme comprises 14 weeks of fast-track training, followed by placements within all the technology teams in Leeds and Sheffield.

Four learning streams will cover Software Engineering, Software Engineer in Test, DevOps and Test Engineer, as well as covering a variety of topics in AGILE, Lean, business skills, databases, scalability and software testing. Graduates will also learn to code Ruby and JavaScript.

The programme is the first bespoke early careers scheme to take place at the company, which recently announced news that in its first year of independent operation, it contributed £126m GVA to Leeds’s economy.

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