Omegapoint's trainee program encourages young civil engineers to stay in Umeå

Fewer and fewer students from the region are choosing to stay in Umeå after completing their studies, according to research from Umeå University. To encourage more young talents to find exciting career opportunities at home, Omegapoint is now launching a trainee program in digitalization and cybersecurity in Umeå.

Northern Sweden is forward-thinking in areas where digitalization is important, and that is one reason why we are investing here. By developing our trainee program in Umeå, we also gain access to top recent graduates who want to stay and build their future here,” says Mattias Sällström, office manager at Omegapoint in Umeå.

The first two trainees are Emil Westin and Nils Hedin. They both have MScs in technical computer science from Umeå University and started at Omegapoint in the autumn. Both grew up in Sollefteå and see great development opportunities within Omegapoint.

–I got to know Omegapoint at job fairs at the university and was hooked on their strong focus on skills development. This spring I had the chance to do my thesis here within distributed file systems in Kubernetes. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to apply for the trainee program, says Nils Hedin.

The trainee program, also known as the Omegapoint Academy Professional Program, is nine months long. It alternates work on customer projects with training in everything from consulting roles to agile methods, secure application development, modern web technologies, test-driven development and much more.

–The first two weeks we were in Stockholm for training. Among other things, we got to meet many senior colleagues who told us about how they work practically with different techniques and methods – and the theory we studied at university was given a practical anchoring in reality, says Emil Westin.

The first weeks of training are now followed by case work at a customer under the supervision of a senior consultant. Nils and Emil have been assigned to Ålö in Umeå where they work with programming and problem solving. Emil says that it is rewarding to create something that is abstract for many but that affects reality in a very concrete way.

The heart is burning for Norrland and both Emil and Nils look forward to continuing to develop and work in the region. For Omegapoint, the investment in the trainee program is the beginning of a long-term journey.

–Digitalization and cybersecurity are today issues that affect all companies and actors in society. It is important that we can retain young talents who can contribute to the safe development of our customers in the region. In the long term, we plan to be able to offer even more trainee positions and a really good local career, concludes Mattias.