Post graduate engineer

Level 6/7 apprenticeship (non-degree qualification) · Engineering and manufacturing route · Standard ST0456 v1.0

Level: 7
Typical duration: 30 months (about 2.5 years)
Max funding band: £27,000
Route: Engineering and manufacturing

Developing innovative solutions to complex technical engineering problems

About the role

The engineering sector is key to the UK economy and generates just over one quarter of total UK GDP. Engineering employers are projected to need over 180k people with engineering skills each year to 2022 and to help meet this requirement we need to double the number of graduates entering the industry. Our universities currently produce about 25k engineering and technology first degrees each year. The Post Graduate Engineer Standard will be critical in meeting the sector’s future skills needs. They will work in an area that covers a wide range of generic engineering disciplines which could include for example: software, integrated systems, mechanical, electrical, electronic, electromechanical, fluid power components/systems and materials.

How it compares

At 30 months (about 2.5 years), it is shorter than average for a degree-level apprenticeship (the average across all 172 Level 6+ standards is 39 months).

The funding band — the maximum an employer's levy can contribute to training costs — is £27,000, at or above the £21,500 average for degree-level standards. Apprentices never pay tuition either way.

It has 11 specialist options, so two apprentices on this standard can follow noticeably different paths.

Typical job titles

Research and Development Engineer
Design and Development Engineer
Systems Integration Engineer
Quality Assurance/Compliance Engineer
Test / Qualification Engineer
Manufacture / Production Engineer
Maintenance / Test Engineer
Product Support (inc logistics) Engineer
Decommissioning/ Disposal Engineer
Supply Chain/Procurement
Engineering Business Manager

Specialist options

Research and Development Engineer
Design and Development Engineer
System Integration Engineer
Quality Assurance/Compliance Engineer
Test/Qualification Engineer
Manufacture/Production Engineer
Product Support (including logistics) Engineer
Decommissioning/Disposal Engineer
Supply Chain/Procurement
Engineering Business Manager
Maintenance/Test Engineer

What you'll learn

The official standard defines 27 knowledge areas, 96 skills, 5 behaviours. This is the actual assessed content of the apprenticeship — worth reading before an interview, because competency questions are usually written straight from these lists.

Knowledge 27

The theoretical knowledge to solve problems in existing and emerging technologies, applying and developing analytical techniques
Understanding of business and commercial needs/constraints
Knowledge and understanding of own competencies capabilities and limitations, ability to work within these and highlight when work goes outside of these
Understanding of financial responsibilities and authorisation processes
Understanding of technical sign off responsibilities, who within their organisation needs to be involved in the sign off of product/processes
Understand the unpredictability of research projects and the need to adapt and adjust daily planning needs to accommodate new developments.
Understand how to analyse and interpret data, both quantitative and qualitative, in order to inform research and development decisions/strategies
Understand the requirements and limitations (Customer, environmental, safety, cost, timescale), and how to propose design and development solutions that best address these
Understand design concepts and principles relating to the development of products, services and specifications
Understand systems architecture, design installations, including material applications and systems methodology as applicable
Understand the applications of diagnostic methods, monitoring and test equipment required for systems integration
Understand, in-depth the legal and regulatory requirements and the responsibilities of all those involved in the product lifecycle
Understand Safety Management Systems (SMS) as applied to the business
Have sufficient knowledge of product regulatory compliance and how to test for compliance on safety and all regulatory requirements
Understand environmental test and the effects of forces and conditions on the performance and reliability of the product
Understand manufacturing engineering production methods and quality issues relating to the manufacture of products
Understand manufacturing engineering requirements, such as Process Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (PFMEA)
Understand the operating principles and limitations of equipment under maintenance/test
Understand how to produce maintenance/test schedules for both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance/test activities
Understand the product being assessed for repair using available technical data and support from subject matter experts as appropriate.
Understand legislative and regulatory requirements relating to the product
Understand all relevant regulations and guidelines in relation to the decommissioning of products or processes
Understand the health, safety and environmental requirements of the decommissioning process
Understand the implications of non-compliance and the impact this will have on a business and/or environment.
Understand how to investigate, implement and evaluate new product introduction (NPI) strategies.
Understand the principles of risk management and how lessons learnt can be implemented to ensure project risk is recognised and minimised through the project life cycle
Understand all internal processes, regulatory requirements in order to meet customers’ requirements

Skills 96

Safe working practices, an understanding of technical governance and quality management
Compliance with legislation and codes, but be able to seek improvements
Practical competence to deliver innovative products and services
Technical responsibility for complex engineering systems
Accountability for project(s)/programme(s), finance and personnel management
Management of trade-offs between technical and socio-economic factors
The skill sets necessary to develop other technical staff
Adapt and adjust daily planning needs to accommodate new developments as a result of the unpredictability of research projects.
Analyse and record data to aid the design of future research and produce useful findings for other academics, funders, policy makers and practitioners.
Prepare materials (work piece, tooling, fixtures, etc.) such as set up equipment for experiments, carry out research, run samples and experiments, and interpret results to obtain data for research.
Contribute to research by acquiring and interpreting research data, ensuring that the methodology and purpose are defined in advance and contribute to the development of new techniques, models and methods.
Undertake research, collate, organise and edit material for inclusion in reports and other documents, ensuring that data results are presented in a professional and concise manner.
Plan and allocate work and responsibilities over the short-medium term, with an awareness of longer term issues.
Plan in advance to meet details for project reports, journal publications and to support presentations and papers for conferences.
Design and develop solutions to common or well-articulated engineering situations, problems, issues and working as part of a team apply engineering design concepts and principles to develop products, services and specifications
Validate that the design will satisfy the requirements of the product or service
Provide design and development inputs to resolve technical & performance issues, problems for a platform, product or service
Make trade-offs between requirements (Customer, environmental, safety, cost, timescale) and articulate the impact of these
Support and/or perform cost / benefit analysis for all options proposed depending on the complexity of the product or service
Critique own and others design proposals
Plan and review the outcome of the design and development activities and action changes to recover where outcomes are not as predicted
Improve designs, solutions and processes through experimenting, incorporating user feedback and working with others to seek out improvement ideas
Interpret the systems architecture, design installations, including material applications and methods as applicable
Monitor, test and use diagnostic methods required to support integration
Identify issues with system integration, test environment and design proving problems present at the design phase of products
Identify possible opportunities for improving systems practices, processes and/or procedures take the technical lead to identify and implement solutions to complex system problems
Create integration architecture deliverables working in conjunction with business projects, translating user requirements to solutions
Work with manufacturing specialists to ensure design can translate to manufacturing processes and systems
Establish clear and precise criteria for assuring the quality of engineering products or processes, defining audit and monitoring processes
Ensure that the specified quality assurance methods and procedures are implemented correctly, upholding the safety and quality culture within the organisation
Obtain accurate information from valid sources on the engineering product or process being quality assured obtain accurate information from valid sources on the engineering product or process being quality assured
Assess accurately the quality of the engineering products or processes and produce detailed reports
Ensure that information on quality is recorded and provided to the appropriate people
Recommend improvements to quality product and processes to the appropriate people
Carry out interviews for post holder or nominated positions
Manage audits on vendor organisations
Develop formal test plans to ensure test requirements are achieved
Ensure that the capabilities of current test facilities is clearly understood to be able to determine the ability of the test equipment to support the testing requirements (including calibration and measurement uncertainty)
Determine the tests required to support and inform reliability predictions
Be conversant with product and development life cycles and how test fits into and supports the broader development and manufacturing environment
Be conversant with national and international standards relevant to test development and test execution in both the civil and military environments as appropriate
Be able to accurately and impartially observe, record and provide accurate and impartial technical reports, project progress reports, test data analysis and metrics
Liaise with internal and external customers to provide technical guidance on test specifications, standards and results.
Provide technically effective and cost effective test proposals and solutions to product development, production and product customer(s) where applicable
Demonstrate technical competence to develop and lead the implementation of continuous improvement activities at all stages of the manufacturing/production process
Ensure that the full design intent is accurately converted into clear manufacturing instructions.
Ensure the engineering integrity of bills of material (BOM) and configuration control are maintained
Act as the focal point for manufacturing engineering and quality issues relating to the manufacture of product
Develop and deploy performance and process metrics which are consistent across the production groups.
Compile programme schedules for a defined production area and assist with the definition of tooling/process requirements for the introduction of new and existing products.
Be responsible for the introduction of new products, and/or modifications to existing product manufacture and its associated tooling
Use and apply the manufacturing engineering requirements, such as Process Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (PFMEA)
Assume technical authorship of defined manufacturing engineering and business processes, and associated procedures
Generate reports to demonstrate impact of all production/process modifications implemented to include, improvements in yield and cycle time
Ensure the impacts on cost, quality, programme and risk targets are understood in the implementation of new production processes
Monitor, organise and perform the maintenance activities to minimise the down time of the equipment and/or components
Ensure the equipment and/or components perform within operational standards, using approved data and techniques
Ensure all the specific safety precautions and procedures are observed during the course of the test/maintenance activity including isolation of other systems as necessary to protect themselves, others and the equipment
Ensure that all maintenance and repair activities are performed in a safe manner which will lead to the reinstatement of the system/equipment/component to its functional condition
Obtain, specify, write and use the appropriate documentation required to support maintenance and test.
Ensure serviceable and appropriate spares, tooling and equipment are available to support scheduled and unscheduled maintenance activities
Ensure instances where maintenance activities cannot be fully met are reported so that limitations on the release of the system/equipment/component for continued use can be determined.
Dispose of all waste materials in accordance with safe working practices, approved procedures and environmental requirements
Assess the product to be repaired using available technical data and support from subject matter experts as appropriate.
Interpret technical product data and communicate this effectively to customers and operators at the appropriate level
Apply diagnostic analysis, tools and techniques in a logical manner and provide options and solutions
Utilise software analytics in the diagnostic process and provide customer / operator feed back
Produce reports to inform reliability and maintainability processes and product reliability analysis
Obtain accurate details for engineering products or processes to be decommissioned and review engineering their decommissioning requirements
Identify decommissioning options for products or processes ensuring that they comply with all relevant regulations and guidelines and conditions are suitable to implement these
Identify the health, safety and environmental requirements of the decommissioning process
Specify decommissioning methods and procedures to be implemented
Plan and manage the decommissioning of engineering product or process
Identify potential decommissioning risks and produce associated contingency plans and solve decommissioning problems that occur
Assess and evaluate the results/outcomes of the decommissioning of engineering products or processes and ensure lessons learnt re incorporated into future processes
Recommend engineering products or processes for decommissioning and evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of decommissioning these
Advise colleagues and stakeholders on current decommissioning information, providing advice and guidance as necessary
Verify the decommissioned status of the engineering product or process
Ensure that the requirements defined within the technical specifications for suppliers are achievable
Investigate the implications of non-compliance and ensure impact assessments are undertaken and recovery actions plans are established.
Identify opportunities for process improvement, waste elimination and cost reduction across the supply chain
Provide technical support to the supplier
Provide technical support and advice to internal stakeholders and support sourcing decisions, commodity teams planning and provide the supplier point of view in reviews internally
manage supplier technical relationships to ensure projects are delivered on time and proactive risk management is in place and risk.
Work with the supply chain team to understand capabilities, capacities and commitments and agree appropriate timescales for transfers based on these
Manage supplier design data queries and change requests.
Support new product introduction (NPI) strategies and transfer plans through NPI program life from a technical engineering perspective.
Ensure that engineering integrity is achieved, engineering procedures are complied with
Co-ordinate a cross functional and multidiscipline engineering team to deliver all work packages within time and cost budgets to required quality on assigned programs
Develop a strong and positive technical relationship with all internal and external customers.
Effectively manage resource to achieve plans and to drive improvements to enhance productivity
Inject knowledge and expertise to the team and customer to ensure robust and timely solutions are developed for technical and programme issues.
Ensure rigorous application of risk management and lessons learnt to ensure project risk is understood and minimised through the project life cycle.
Ensure all internal process, regulatory and customer requirements are met.
Lead the engineering technical/manufacturing team to ensure that lessons learnt are addressed and a robust trouble free product is developed
Ensure that product strategies are in place to provide discriminating technologies for future products if appropriate

Behaviours 5

Knowledge and understanding: Demonstrating commitment to continue personal development, refreshing and expanding Engineering knowledge keeping up-to-date with emerging technologies
Design and development of processes, systems, services and products: Contributing proactively to the continuing development of Engineering within their domain
Responsibility, management or leadership: Taking personal responsibility for their actions, managing projects, including resource management within their remit and able to mentor and instruct others in associated standards and best practice
Communication and inter-personal skills: Being able to demonstrate a range of communication styles and methods. Understanding the importance of networks within and across functions, handling conflict, giving and using feedback effectively. Able to understand the different needs for business relationships and their associated communication requirements.
Professional commitment: Demonstrating a personal, ethical and professional commitment to society, their profession and the environment, adopting a set of values and behaviours that will maintain and enhance the reputation of the profession as well as their organisation and fulfilling requirements with respect to maintenance of personal records for Professional Registration.

Live vacancies

No live vacancies for this course as of 2026-07-24 — new adverts appear on Find an apprenticeship daily, and many degree apprenticeship employers recruit on their own careers sites instead.

Universities registered to deliver it

7 universities are on the government provider register for this standard. Registration means they can deliver it — live vacancies depend on employer partnerships each recruitment cycle.

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Official sources

Occupational summary, duties, knowledge, skills and behaviours reproduced from the ST0456 apprenticeship standard (last updated 2017-03-31) — contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Always check the official page before applying: standards get revised.