Sky Betting & Gaming has welcomed 27 technology graduates into its first intake for an internal trainee programme.
The new Software Academy at Wellington Place in Leeds aims to bring in talented grads and develop them for full-time employment.
The scheme, 14 weeks of fast-track training followed by placements within all the technology teams in Leeds and Sheffield, costs the firm an average of 拢60k per place.
Just under 70% of the graduates came from universities in Yorkshire, including Hull University, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds University, Sheffield University, Sheffield Hallam University and Bradford University.
鈥淲e鈥檙e committed to Yorkshire and have been able to recruit at record rates here over the last 12 months,鈥� said Matt Hughan, head of recruitment.
鈥淏y offering such high quality placements, we鈥檝e not only been able to hold on to home grown graduates from our local universities, but also to attract those from further afield.鈥�
Our Tech Grads kicking off their Graduate academy training in Leeds!
鈥� Sky Bet – Sheffield (@skybetsheffield)
Only four of the 27 studied at universities in the South.
The graduates will study software engineering, DevOps, AGILE, Lean, business skills, databases, scalability and software testing, plus learn to code in Ruby and JavaScript.
West Yorkshire 鈥榰nicorn鈥� Sky Betting & Gaming was valued at 拢800m when a majority stake was sold to CVC Capital Partners in 2014.
CTO Andy Burton told a recent 老九品茶Cloud roundtable that he considered moving the firm to Manchester 鈥� but is glad he didn鈥檛 after hiring 150 people in the tech team in 20 weeks.
Sky PLC retains a 20 per cent stake in Sky Betting and Gaming, which now employs more than 700 people.