What is the Answer Academy?
The Answer Academy is our talent-development programme designed to give people the technical capability, consulting skills and confidence they need to thrive in real delivery environments.
It blends structured teaching, self-learning and hands-on mentoring from our own practitioners, the same people who deliver complex digital programmes for clients across healthcare, finance and other regulated sectors.
This model has been a core part of Answer Digital for over a decade, running across all our engineering, data, assurance and DevOps capabilities.
A rich history of home-grown talent
The Answer Academy began in September 2014 as a pathway into technology for graduates and career-changers. Over ten years on, it remains central to our culture and our growth.
We’ve welcomed around 80 people through the Academy, and half of our current workforce started their Answer journey here. Many now work at senior or principal level, lead teams, mentor others and play pivotal roles in major programmes.
How our Academy structure can benefit your business
For clients, the Answer Academy offers a dependable way to grow capability and deliver at pace, with real flexibility built in.
“Answer Digital completely changed my career. I was a teacher, and it kick-started my journey into tech. For a woman in technology, the Academy supports you from day one. Other Academies have lots of people; with Answer you get dedicated attention and a personal learning experience.”
— Tessa May, Principal Consultant & Academy Mentor
Why our talent matters
Being an employee-owned consultancy means our people have a material stake in the success of our work, and that includes how we grow our teams.
The Academy allows us to invest deeply in people who share our mindset and values: collaboration, curiosity, integrity and a commitment to doing work that genuinely improves outcomes.
This model benefits clients too. It creates teams with strong continuity, shared ways of working and long-term knowledge retention. As the presentation notes, Academites statistically stay longer than contractors or mid-career hires, strengthening delivery stability and reducing attrition risk on projects
Programmes include...
Engineering
You’ll receive mentorship through our community of incredibly talented Software Engineers - pushing the boundaries with cutting edge tech is at the heart what we do! After completing the Academy you’ll have gained exposure to Backend and Frontend technologies, ready to start working on solving our customers problems.
Delivery
We’ll provide you with hands-on Project Management training, support from our Agile Delivery experts and formal Scrum qualifications. Once you’ve completed our Academy you’ll have all the tools to support a Software Engineering team adopt agile ways of working.
Testing
Our Test Academy will give you comprehensive training on all aspects of Quality assurance; from writing code to automate test processes, testing the security of applications or reviewing accessibility to AA-WCAG standards. Once you’ve completed our Academy, you’ll use the skills you’ve learned to make a real difference to our clients.
Business Analysis
Developing your Analysis and Consulting skills through a combination of classroom sessions, 1-1 mentoring and guided learning, our Business Analysis Academy will give you the tools to understand our clients and ask them the biggest question, “Why?”