The Data Engineer Apprenticeship
(Level 5).

A levy-funded, work-based programme against Skills England standard ST1386 for people who build and run the systems that collect, store, move and prepare data for analysts, data scientists and AI. Apprentices design and automate pipelines, work with SQL, NoSQL and distributed stores, build on cloud platforms, and keep data products secure, documented and resilient. It sits at Level 5, equivalent to a foundation degree or HND.

First closed employer cohorts are planned for 2027. We are building the programme to the revised ST1386 assessment plan that applies to all starts from 18 December 2026, so the first apprentices are assessed against the plan that will be current, not the one being retired. Tell us about your data team now and we will shape the first cohort around it.

Skills England's typical duration is 24 months on programme; the minimum is 12 months. TESS plans 18 to 24 months depending on the apprentice's starting point, then gateway and an end-point assessment window that is typically three months. Apprentices with solid SQL and Python already can move faster.

The standard sits in the £19,000 Skills England funding band. Levy-paying employers with funds in their Growth and Skills Levy account pay nothing extra. Non-levy employers pay 5% (£950) for apprentices aged 25 and over and nothing for apprentices aged 16 to 24. Levy payers whose account has run out co-invest 25% (£4,750) on new starts. The apprentice pays nothing.

Existing staff in data, BI, IT or software roles who are already touching pipelines, databases or reporting platforms and need to do it to a professional standard: BI developers, junior data engineers, database administrators, analytics engineers, developers moving into data, and Level 4 Data Analyst graduates. The standard has no entry qualifications beyond the English and maths rules; working knowledge of SQL and some Python is the realistic starting point, and we confirm it on a skills scan.

SQL for modelling, warehousing and querying; Python for pipelines, testing and automation; Spark and streaming for large and real-time data; cloud data platforms on the Microsoft stack (Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Factory, Azure Databricks) with awareness of AWS and Google Cloud; Git, CI/CD and orchestration; data quality, cataloguing and monitoring tools. The Microsoft Certified: Fabric Data Engineer Associate (DP-700) exam is planned as the vendor certification and will be confirmed before the first cohort starts.

By 1st for Awarding, an Ofqual-regulated end-point assessment organisation on the register for ST1386. Under the current plan there are two methods after gateway: a project evaluation report of about 3,500 words on a real piece of work, with a 50-minute presentation and questions; and an 80-minute professional discussion of ten questions across data quality and performance, problem solving, regulatory compliance, continuous improvement and professional development. Each method is graded Fail, Pass or Distinction and the overall grade is Fail, Pass, Merit or Distinction. The revised plan from 18 December 2026 may adjust these details; we will confirm the final format with 1st for Awarding before your cohort starts.

The Level 4 Data Analyst produces the person who asks questions of the data; the Level 5 Data Engineer produces the person who builds the platform those questions run on. Many employers run both from the same levy account, and an analyst who completes the Level 4 is a natural Level 5 candidate. The AI & Automation Practitioner Level 4 sits alongside for teams automating processes with Copilot and Power Automate, and the Level 6 AI & Machine Learning Fellowship for teams building models on the data the engineers deliver.