TechStart pathway
Olya's story
From tinkering on a laptop at home to shipping code in a real team.
Age 21 · East London
"TechStart gave me the missing pieces - the confidence, the network and the first real project I could point at and say, I built that."
Where it started
Olya arrived in the UK at 17 and taught herself the basics of HTML and CSS on a second-hand laptop. She wanted to work in tech but had no formal qualifications, no professional network, and no clear route in. Bootcamps were out of reach financially and university didn't feel like the right fit.
Joining the programme
Olya joined the core TechStart cohort - twelve weeks of structured training in JavaScript, Git and modern web frameworks, paired with weekly one-to-ones with a working developer. For the first time she was building alongside other young people who took her seriously.
The employer project
Halfway through the programme, Olya's cohort was matched with a fintech partner to rebuild an internal dashboard. Olya led the front-end work, learning code review, sprint planning and how to ask good questions in stand-up. The project shipped to production.
Landing the role
The employer offered Olya a paid apprenticeship the week the cohort ended. She spent the next six months rotating between the web and platform teams, with TechStart continuing to check in every fortnight.