Graduate Trainee Programme

The Brilliant Esystems Graduate Trainee Programme has run since 2017 and it exists for a straightforward reason: the gap between a Nigerian technology degree and a productive first engineering job is wider than it should be, and we would rather close it ourselves than complain about it. Trainees join on a fixed-term eighteen-month contract, are paid a monthly salary from day one, and rotate through three practices in six-month blocks before confirmation. A little over four in five complete the programme and are confirmed into permanent roles.

The rotations are real work, not observation. From your fourth week you will be assigned tickets on a live client engagement with an experienced engineer reviewing everything you produce. In the first rotation you might be writing tests and small features on BrilliantEd or BrilliantHR; in the second you might be building infrastructure with Terraform or triaging alerts in the security operations centre; in the third you are typically trusted with a self-contained component of a client deliverable and expected to present it at a design review.

Every trainee is assigned a mentor from outside their current rotation team, meeting fortnightly for the full eighteen months. The mentor is your continuity — the person who knows the whole arc of your programme while your rotation managers change three times. Mentors receive training before their first pairing and are drawn from Engineer II level upwards. Several of our current leads were themselves graduate trainees and now mentor the cohorts behind them, which is exactly the flywheel we wanted.

The programme also funds one professional certification of your choice from an approved list, including AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate, Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate, Cisco CCNA and CompTIA Security+. The company pays for the training and the first examination attempt, and the ICT Training Academy in Kano runs the preparation bootcamps in-house. Trainees sit the examination during the second rotation, when the material connects to what they are doing every day.

You are eligible if you hold a first degree at Second Class Lower or above, or a Higher National Diploma at Upper Credit or above, in any discipline, and you completed that qualification within the last three years. Graduates of any subject may apply — we take physicists, mathematicians, statisticians, electrical and electronic engineers, accountants and computer scientists — but you must be able to demonstrate genuine interest in technology through a project, a portfolio, a certification or self-taught work you can talk through in detail. You must have completed NYSC or hold a valid exemption or exclusion certificate before your start date.

Trainees are paid a monthly salary of ₦250,000 gross for the first two rotations, rising to ₦320,000 for the third once you are contributing to client deliverables independently. From day one you receive full HMO cover for yourself, group life assurance, pension contributions under the Pension Reform Act, and the same laptop and monthly data allowance as permanent staff. Trainees based in Kano use the staff shuttle and the subsidised canteen on the same terms as everyone else.

On successful completion at eighteen months you are confirmed as Engineer I on a permanent contract, currently within a band of ₦3.6m to ₦5.4m gross per year depending on assessed performance, and you become eligible for the 13th-month payment, the performance bonus and the full benefits package. Confirmation is decided by a panel drawn from your three rotation managers and your mentor, against criteria published to you at the start of the programme. There is no bond and no repayment clause: if you complete the programme and choose to leave, you leave.