2025 – A Junior Engineer’s Reflection
With the turn of the year approaching and our workloads winding down, the festive holiday affords us the opportunity to rest and reflect before gearing up to tackle another year. In my case, a Junior Support Engineer at TechSolvers, 2025 has been a year of progress and increasing responsibility!My name is Sam Wyatt, and I joined TechSolvers in the summer of 2024 as a keen but inexperienced IT Apprentice, with my career to that point consisting only of setting up my parents’ phones and resetting their forgotten passwords. The year of 2025 threw several challenges and tests at me in my professional and personal life, and I can now proudly look back at the hurdles I managed to clear:
- Achieving three IT qualifications – CompTIA A+, Microsoft Certified: Fundamentals and NinjaOne Certified Technician
- Passing my driving test.
- Being promoted from a Support Apprentice to a Junior Support Engineer.
Exam Season
Exams are key to apprenticeships in any industry or field, and I was oddly excited to pick up a pen and notepad for the first time since leaving school in 2022. Months of studying and a retake later, I managed to pass the two exams required for CompTIA’s A+ certification, which I’d consider the most influential in my technical education. Working in IT has shown me that quick fixes are rare, and the diagnostic process is key. The A+ qualification gave me the broadest understanding of how the systems we use every day actually work, immeasurably improving my ability to understand and resolve issues I’m tasked to deal with on a daily basis. I supplemented this with some knowledge more specific to the systems we use at TechSolvers through Microsoft Certified: Fundamentals and the NinjaOne Certified Technician qualifications, rounding off a trifecta of certifications!
Navigating the roads
Continuing with the exam theme, I took the testing away from the computer screen and to the roads with my driving test! After a 6 month wait from booking the test, many failed mock exams (including 2 on the eve of the test) and the most nervous 15 minutes I’ve ever spent in waiting room, I thankfully succeeded in obtaining my license. 
The personal freedoms of being able to drive are obvious, but this has even allowed me to go on a lot more client visits, including my first lone-site visits - probably the biggest step up in responsibility I’ve experienced in my career so far. It’s certainly a new and daunting experience feeling as if your actions are solely representative of an entire business, but meeting clients face-to-face and having the opportunity to build a rapport with people who I’ve previously only know the voices of remains my favourite part of the job.
Stepping up
Around two months ago now, my efforts over the past year were rewarded with a promotion to Junior Support Engineer. My promotion also paved the way for a new apprentice to join TechSolvers, which has seen my role change from student to teacher! Although I’m far from a master in the IT field, imparting what knowledge I have accumulated in my time here to another person, and being responsible for getting them up to speed on how we work, has been a very rewarding experience. This change in role and responsibility signifies, to me, the first big leap in my professional career, and I look forward to making more strides in the years to come.
Written by Sam Wyatt (December 2025).