Summer Placement Software Engineer in Midlothian

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 summer placement students who want to be part of something bigger—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. Leonardo's Summer Placement Programme offers you a paid opportunity to develop your current skillset in an innovative and practical environment that can lead to a place on our award-winning Graduate Development programme.

Come and join one of our multi-disciplinary integrated project teams in Edinburgh and contribute to the solving of real-life engineering problems on state-of-the-art avionics sensor systems, such as the radar for the Typhoon fighter jet, the radar for the SAAB Gripen fighter, one of our family of Surveillance AESA Radars, an IRCM (Infra-Red Counter-Measures) system, or perhaps on one of our laser target designator or laser ranging systems.

The 13-week Summer Placement Programme has been created across our UK sites to increase your technical skills and give you the opportunity to work on meaningful real-life projects, alongside experienced engineers and graduates across our business. You will receive coaching and support to achieve your personal goals and work in multidisciplinary teams to gain as much experience across the product lifecycle from your time in industry as possible.

Our ultimate aim is to see you through your undergrad years and successful placements may result in an offer to return for further placements or for an offer on our Graduate Development programme. The programme will run from 1st June to 28th August.

As a Summer Placement Software Engineer you will:

• Provide support to real projects.
• Apply knowledge gained while studying in a practical way.
• Undertake activities including designing, testing, qualifying and supporting technology across our range of products.
• Work as part of an established engineering community, supported by a team of experienced engineers, responsible for delivering small packages of work to time, cost and quality.
• Collaborate across multiple disciplines and solve problems.
• Communicate with team members to share knowledge.
• Complete tasks to a high standard in accordance with appropriate processes and procedures.
• Use the opportunity to develop engineering skills.

A supervisor will be available to provide mentoring whilst working as a fully integrated member of the team. At the start of your placement, prepare a short presentation to introduce yourself and discuss what you will be working on to the Head of Software and the wider team. At the end of your placement, showcase what you have learned and achieved during your time at Leonardo to the Head of Software and the wider team.

Particular emphasis will be placed on learning practical skills that may not be easily gained or experienced in the academic environment of a university.

What you will bring:

All of our Placement roles require a minimum of a predicted 2:1 grade in a relevant degree discipline e.g. Software Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics or Electronic Engineering (BSc (Hon) / BEng (Hon) / MEng) to have the opportunity to experience a 13-week paid industrial placement working as a Software Engineer within Leonardo.

Competencies we look for:

• Demonstrate an interest in Software Engineering in the area of real-time development for avionic systems.
• Have some 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.
• Applications are also welcomed from candidates who have completed a first degree and are looking to gain industrial experience prior to commencing a relevant higher degree (i.e. PhD, MSc).

Personal Attributes:

• Self-motivated with lots of drive and enthusiasm.
• Able to use own initiative to achieve overall objectives.
• Able to work under pressure and achieve challenging deadlines within an environment of changing priorities.
• Highly responsive with strong customer focus.
• Thorough, seeing job through to completion while maintaining high standards.
• Able to work flexibly and be readily adaptable to situational changes, in keeping with our custom working policy.

Security Clearance:

This role is subject to pre-employment screening in line with the UK Government's Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS). An additional range of Personnel Security Controls referred to as National Security Vetting (NSV) may apply, this could include meeting the eligibility requirements for The Security Check (SC).

Why join us:

At Leonardo, our people are at the heart of everything we do, key contributors in shaping innovation, advancing technology, and enhancing global safety.

Benefits:

Time to recharge: Our employees are entitled to 25 days of annual leave plus...