Industrial Placement Software Engineer

Your impact

Are you ready to make an impact and gain hands-on experience working on real-world projects from day one?

At Leonardo, we’re looking for Industrial Placement students who want to be part of something extraordinary—shaping innovation, advancing technology, and enhancing global safety.

Our placements are designed to help you apply your studies in a practical setting, develop your technical skills, and gain valuable insight into how our business operates.

The Opportunity (12 month placement)

Our Industrial Placement Programme offers you the chance to spend a year with us, working on meaningful projects alongside subject matter experts, within multidisciplinary teams, and across the product lifecycle. You’ll receive a salary of £26,228, with coaching and support from a dedicated team to help you achieve both your placement objectives and personal development goals.

On our programme, you will engage with challenging and exciting project work and deliver innovative business or technical solutions as part of a team of industry leaders. Throughout the programme, you will receive coaching and support from your team to achieve your objectives as well as your personal development goals. You will gain a wide array of experience on your placement that you can apply to your academic studies and future career. There may be the possibility to continue to collaborate with Leonardo during your final year(s).

Successful completion of an Industrial Placement with Leonardo may also lead to an offer on our Graduate Development Programme. 

We are looking for highly motivated individuals who are willing to take on a challenge to fill our industrial placement roles, and we will demand a high degree of customer focus and work performance from you to meet our operational challenges. If you are willing able to commit to giving your best performance, you will find Leonardo a very rewarding place to work!

What you will do as an Industrial Placement Software Engineering

• Report to an experienced engineer who will provide day-to-day guidance and on-the-job training. You will be introduced to the software development processes and utilise state-of-the-art methods, technology and tools. You will also gain experience on one or more aspects of the software development lifecycle, which could include applied research, requirements analysis, design, implementation, integration, and test
• Be responsible for creating high quality and robust code, for fully documenting and recording your work products, keeping them under configuration management and providing plans and reports on progress to your supervisor
• Deliver technical reports and presentations on your work assignments to your supervisor and fellow placement students and be given assistance to deliver plans and reports to the required academic standard of your university
• Learn the skills required for software development. This could include developing practical skills in design techniques for aerospace applications, understanding of key processes and technologies, developing software using state-of-the-art modelling tools, compilers and test environments
• Your task may involve working closely with Software, Systems, Firmware and Electronics Engineers to solve real integration problems on a complex system
• An opportunity to showcase what you have learned and achieved during your placement to the Head of Software and the wider team

Skills, Qualifications and Knowledge Required:

Our Industrial Placement roles require a minimum of a predicted 2:2 grade in a relevant degree discipline e.g. Software Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics or Electronic Engineering (BSc (Hon) / BEng (Hon) / MEng).

We would like to hear from you if you have a combination of the following:

• Experience of computer programming and be enthusiastic and passionate about designing software and writing code
• Experience of an object-oriented programming language such as C++ and knowledge of UML (Unified Modelling Language) is an advantage but not essential

A full statement of courses and projects studied at university and corresponding grades/marks/percentage should be included in your CV.

Why join us

At Leonardo, our people are at the heart of everything we do. We offer a comprehensive, company-funded benefits package that supports your wellbeing, career development, and work–life balance. Whether you're looking to grow professionally, care for your health, or plan for the future, we’re here to help you thrive.

• Time to Recharge: Our employees are entitled 25 days of annual leave plus bank holidays. As a Summer Placement student you will receive this allowance pro rata.
• Secure your Future: Benefit from our award-winning pension scheme with up to 15% employer contribution.
• Your Wellbeing Matters: Free access to mental health support, financial advice, and employee-led networks championing inclusion and diversity.
• Never Stop Learning: Free access to 4,000+ online courses via Coursera and LinkedIn Learning.

Security Clearance

Many of our roles are subject to security requirements and, where applicable, export control restrictions arising from UK Government requirements and customer obligations many of our roles are subject to security and export control restrictions set by UK Government Security requirements and customer obligations.

As a result, and in line with the UK Government Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) requirements, all successful applicants will be asked to provide evidence of identity, eligibility to work in the UK, criminal record declaration information and employment and/or education history verification for the previous five years.

For staff operating in more sensitive posts, there is an additional range of personnel security controls referred to as National Security Vetting (NSV). As part of this process, a range of factors may be considered, including an individual's background, travel history, nationality, previous nationalities held and other information relevant to the vetting assessment.

To be eligible for National Security Vetting at SC level, applicants will generally be expected to have continuously resided in the UK for the previous five years. For DV clearance, this is typically ten years. In some circumstances, time spent overseas may be accepted, with additional overseas checks. Additional vetting requirements may apply upon appointment.

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