York-based RotaCloud, the UK’s leading employee management platform, has teamed up with Northcoders to launch a brand new bursary fund ( https://rotacloud.com/women-in-tech-fund/ ) that aims to help women and gender minorities start a new career in tech.

Two £5,000 bursaries will be available in conjunction with Northcoder’s fully funded Software Development Coding Bootcamp. The bursaries will be paid directly to the successful applicants and can be used to buy equipment or to cover living costs while studying. The course itself is an industry led programme that takes a career first approach and is already fully funded by the Department of Education. On the course participants will learn all the skills they need to become a junior software developer in just 13 weeks.

To be eligible for the DfE funded Skills Bootcamp, applicants must be aged 19 or over, be a resident in England, be in work, self-employed, recently unemployed or returning to work after a break, and looking to quickly increase their skills in a specific area and fast-track into a new job. All women and gender minorities are eligible to apply for the supporting bursary fund, and on completion of the course, the successful applicants will also have the option of undertaking a six-month paid internship at RotaCloud working as a junior software developer.

Since it was established in 2015, Northcoders has grown to become one of the country’s principal independent providers of training programmes for software coding and data engineering. It operates a hybrid structure and has flagship sites in Manchester and Leeds as well as hubs in Newcastle and Birmingham. As a business, it is passionate about addressing the digital skills gap in the UK and promoting diversity, inclusion and quality.

RotaCloud is a global leader in staff management software solutions. With hundreds of thousands of users across the world, RotaCloud is used by businesses of all sizes to help plan rotas and schedules, manage teams, and streamline HR processes. Since 2014, household names including Premier League football clubs, national retail chains and the NHS, to local pubs and shops, have trusted RotaCloud to provide a straightforward, user-friendly way to manage their employees. 

Pam Hinds, Head of People at RotaCloud, said: “RotaCloud is committed to making careers in tech as accessible as possible for everyone.  It isn’t just the cost of education that can be a barrier to (re)training, it’s the extra burdens too — things like not being financially able to take time off from work or being able to afford equipment or childcare. Our aim with the new bursary scheme is to provide women and gender minorities real support to get started in the tech industry and to hopefully help promote more diversity in our sector.”

Amul Batra – Chief Operating Office at Northcoders – added: “This new bursary will directly help women and gender minorities and is a fantastic step in helping to drive home the message that pursuing a career in tech should not be limited to certain groups of people. RotaCloud’s vision - and its financial contribution - will, I’m sure, inspire some tech stars of the future to make their dreams a reality.”

Applications for the RotaCloud x Northcoders Bursary are open now: https://rotacloud.com/women-in-tech-fund/.