21-year-old Danny Winn from Newport Pagnell started a general maintenance engineering apprenticeship at Amazon in Milton Keynes in 2016. He is working towards a qualification to become a reliability and maintenance engineer after three years of training study with Amazon and Bedford College.
Speaking about the Amazon Apprenticeship Programme, Danny said, “I applied for a place on the programme because engineering runs in my family. My dad and both granddads are engineers and mechanics, and while there was never any pressure on me to get into this field, I knew it was what I wanted to do from a very young age.”
I knew it was what I wanted to do from a very young age
What sort of things does Danny get up to on the day job? He explains: “It’s really quite varied and no two days are the same. I enjoy checking all the machines and systems in the fulfilment centre. This includes things like the machine that puts the address labels onto your parcels before they leave the building and belts that keep all the products moving around the site."
"I also work on a programme that we call preventative maintenance. That’s when we isolate different machines throughout the day to make sure they’re healthy and working well, to avoid any breakdowns. We basically just keep the site running smoothly at all times.”
Danny has learned lots of important things during his apprenticeship journey so far. But the most important? “Teamwork. It’s so important to understand the value of working together to get the job done. Communicating with our teammates means that everyone knows the status of a job, which means everything gets done and nothing gets done twice, unnecessarily.”
“Working to a timescale is also something that’s been great for me to learn. If we take too long to complete a job, it may cause an issue with the site and if we don’t spend long enough on a task, the job might not be complete, and it’ll cause a bigger issue later. That’s been really interesting for me to learn.”
Danny is one of over 300 apprentices currently working at Amazon in the UK. Amazon has announced it will create a further 1,000 new apprenticeships for new and existing employees in fulfilment centres and development centres across the country. The new apprentices will add to over 27,500 permanent employees currently in the UK, with pay ranging from an entry level starting salary of £9.50/£10.50 an hour, up to £30,000 a year.
Nine different programmes are on offer across the country to people of all levels, ranging from IT, safety and HR through to software engineering, robotics, leadership and technology.
Two-in-every-ten new apprenticeships will be offered exclusively to Amazon’s existing workforce, providing a route from working on the shop floor through to working on cutting-edge software development, robotics technology and senior leadership roles in the business.
In addition to being fully-funded, apprentices also receive industry-leading benefits including competitive pay, employee discounts, private medical insurance and company pension plan.
For anyone thinking of applying for a place on the Amazon Apprenticeship Programme, Danny has some advice. “If you have the right attitude and you have a real desire to learn, the Amazon Apprenticeship Programme is perfect. You don’t need to have a background in engineering to succeed here, you just need to want to learn. That’s why I love the Amazon Apprenticeship Programme. It really welcomes people of all backgrounds and interests.”
To find out more about the Amazon Apprenticeship Programme visit www.amazon.jobs/apprentices
