Replacing a generalist bootcamp at a UK Microsoft consultancy

Problem

The consultancy ran a graduate intake through a generalist provider that streamed candidates indiscriminately across QA and engineering tracks, dressing the cohort up as cloud-capable when most of it sat on the QA side. The engineering stream was thin on Azure landing zones, Terraform module patterns and platform engineering basics. New starters needed an extended ramp on the bench before any client work was viable.

What we did

• Designed a 16-week pipeline of 14 engineers focused on Azure platform engineering: AVD, Terraform, Bicep, Azure DevOps, AKS and Entra ID
• Aligned the curriculum to the consultancy's reference architecture and ways of working
• Embedded production-grade project work modelled on the consultancy's typical first engagement
• Ran a final two-week immersion with two of the consultancy's principal engineers shadowing the cohort

Outcome

• Bench time per engineer cut from 11 weeks to 2 weeks
• Engineers billable on Azure landing-zone work in the first sprint of a client engagement
• First-year deployment economics improved by an estimated 38% per head compared to the previous provider
• Two of the cohort promoted to Senior Consultant within nine months