How to Get Into Tech

Do you need a Computer Science degree?

The short answer is no. While a Computer Science (CS) degree gives you a strong theoretical foundation in algorithms, data structures, and mathematics, the tech industry is highly pragmatic. Employers care more about what you can build than what you have studied.

Many large tech employers, including Google and Apple, advertise a large share of their roles without a degree requirement, focusing instead on skills and experience.

If you are applying for highly specialised roles—such as artificial intelligence research, quantitative analysis, or embedded systems engineering—a CS or Mathematics degree is usually required. However, for standard full-stack web development, frontend development, or QA testing, a history or English graduate who has taught themselves to code and built a strong portfolio can successfully compete against a CS graduate.

Graduate schemes vs direct entry

There are two main ways to enter the industry as a junior.

Tech Graduate Schemes

Large corporations (like banks, supermarkets, and telecom companies) run structured graduate schemes. You join a cohort of other graduates, start with an induction and training period, and then rotate through different tech departments (e.g., cybersecurity, data, software engineering), usually over two years. Starting salaries are typically £30,000 to £45,000, with banks at the higher end. See our complete guide to graduate schemes for the application cycle, and apply for summer internships in your penultimate year, which often lead to scheme offers.

• Pros: Excellent training, high job security, and you are not expected to be a coding expert on day one.
• Cons: You have less control over the specific technology stack you work with, and the pace of work can be slower than at a startup.

Direct Entry (Junior Developer Roles)

Startups, scale-ups, and specialised tech agencies usually hire directly for specific roles (e.g., "Junior React Developer").

• Pros: You start writing production code immediately. You learn very quickly by being thrown in the deep end.
• Cons: There is less formal training. You are expected to have a baseline level of coding competency before you start.

See our guide to entry-level jobs for where to find these roles.

The technical interview

If you apply for a coding role, you will face a technical assessment. This is unique to the tech industry and can be intimidating. It usually takes one of three forms:

1. The Take-Home Task: The employer gives you a brief (e.g., "Build a simple weather app using this API") and gives you a few days to complete it. They assess your code quality, architecture, and whether you followed instructions.
2. The Pair Programming Interview: You share your screen with a senior developer and work on a problem together. They are not looking for perfection; they want to see how you communicate, how you debug errors, and how you react to feedback.
3. The LeetCode / Algorithm Test: Common at "Big Tech" companies (Meta, Amazon, Google) and some banks. You must solve algorithmic problems in an online coding platform or shared editor within a strict time limit. This requires specific, dedicated study of data structures.

Check the employer's rules on AI coding assistants before any technical assessment. Many ban them during tests, and interviewers will often ask you to explain your code line by line.

Building a portfolio

If you do not have a CS degree or relevant work experience, your portfolio is your CV.

Employers want to see that you can write clean, working code. Create a GitHub account and pin your three best projects to the top.

• Do not just upload the standard "To-Do List" or "Calculator" apps you built by following a YouTube tutorial line-by-line.
• Do build projects that solve a real problem or interact with a public API. For example, build a dashboard that tracks local bus times, or a web scraper that compiles job listings.
• Document your work. A project with a well-written README.md file explaining why you chose a specific technology and how to run the code locally is incredibly impressive to a hiring manager.

Alternatives: Bootcamps and apprenticeships

If you are not going to university, or if you want to switch careers, you have other options.

Skills Bootcamps (free)

If you are 19 or over and live in England, government-funded Skills Bootcamps offer free courses of up to 16 weeks in areas including software development, data, and cyber security. You do not usually need previous experience, and you are guaranteed a job interview when you finish. Search for courses on the National Careers Service.

Private Coding Bootcamps

These are intensive, short-term training courses (usually 12 to 16 weeks) that teach the specific coding languages and frameworks employers use (like JavaScript, React, and Node.js). They can cost several thousand pounds, so check the provider's job outcomes carefully and see whether a free Skills Bootcamp covers the same ground first.

Degree Apprenticeships

If you are a school leaver, a Digital and Technology Solutions degree apprenticeship is one of the strongest routes in. You work for a company in a tech role and study for a BSc alongside your job. The employer pays your tuition fees, and you earn a salary from day one. You graduate, usually after three to four years, with a degree and years of commercial experience. Higher apprenticeships at Level 4 (such as software developer or data analyst) are a shorter alternative. See our degree apprenticeships deep dive and apprenticeships guide for more details.

Non-coding roles in tech

You can work in tech without ever writing a line of code. Tech companies are businesses, and they need a vast ecosystem of professionals to function.

Data Analysis

You turn raw data into insights that help a business make decisions, using tools like Excel, SQL, and Power BI. It needs comfort with numbers, but not necessarily a coding background to start.

Product Management

You sit between the developers, the designers, and the business stakeholders. You decide what features the team should build next based on user data.

UI/UX Design

You design the visual layout of the software (User Interface) and research how users interact with it (User Experience) to make it intuitive.

QA (Quality Assurance) Testing

You try to break the software before it is released to the public, finding bugs and reporting them to the developers.

Tech Sales / Pre-Sales

You sell the software to other businesses. Pre-sales engineers require a strong understanding of how the tech works to explain it to technical clients.

FAQ

• Which programming language should I learn first?↓

  Which programming language should I learn first?

  For web development, start with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. JavaScript is the language of the web. Once you understand the basics, learn a framework like React. If you are interested in data or AI, start with Python.

• Do I need to be good at maths?↓

  Do I need to be good at maths?

  For most web and mobile development, basic arithmetic is enough. The logic is more akin to learning a foreign language or constructing an argument. However, if you want to work in machine learning, data science, or game physics, advanced mathematics is essential.

• Is the tech job market saturated?↓

  Is the tech job market saturated?

  Competition for junior roles is tough right now. Graduate hiring at large employers is at its lowest level in over a decade, more people are training in tech through degrees and bootcamps, and AI coding tools are changing what employers expect from entry-level developers. That does not mean you cannot get in, but it does mean you need to stand out: a portfolio of real projects, an internship or apprenticeship, the ability to explain your code clearly, and experience using AI tools responsibly all count. Widen your search beyond software engineering to roles like data, QA, and IT support, which can be a stepping stone.

Next steps

If you are applying for a tech graduate scheme at a large corporation, you will still need to pass standard psychometric tests, often including logical or inductive reasoning. Read our guide on psychometric tests explained to prepare, and our video interviews and assessment centres guides for the later stages.

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