Employment and skills

Providing valuable employment opportunities and early careers programmes for young people across Scotland is very important to us.

Scotland’s Railway is currently undergoing its biggest transformation since the Victorian era so we’re always on the lookout for great people to help us achieve this. It takes a lot of people across a lot of departments to do this. We need people from different backgrounds, with different life experiences and different skillsets to make it a success.

As one of the largest companies in Scotland, we were thrilled to be officially recognised by the Top Employers Institute as a Top Employer in the United Kingdom for 2021. To become recognised as a Top Employer, we had to prove that the implementation of our people strategies enriches the world of work of our colleagues. Independent research from the Top Employers Institute found that not only do we provide exceptional employee conditions, we also nurture and develop talent throughout all levels of the organisation and demonstrated our leadership status in the HR environment.

Early Careers

You can join us at any stage in your career, but if you’re at the very beginning of yours, you’ll be happy to hear that we offer lots of routes into a career in the railway.

Our Early Careers Strategy for the next few years sets out a number of targets and outcomes we aim to deliver by the end of 2025. This includes having a minimum of 100 apprentices employed at various points in their programmes across the company. We’ll be working with Scottish schools in each of the mainland local authority areas to deliver a programme of engagement. Plus, we’ll be proactively engaging with Further and Higher Education on the content of curriculum, enhanced placement partnerships, graduate and intern programmes and other mutually beneficial agendas.

We aim to have a minimum of 100 apprentices working with us over the next few years with opportunities available across the business. With an apprenticeship you get the best of both worlds while you learn on the job and in the classroom. With a ScotRail apprenticeship you’ll gain associated qualifications and receive all the support you need to succeed.

In the past, apprentices have gone on to secure permanent roles within the business.

To find out more about apprenticeships available with ScotRail, click here .

Our Graduate programme and Internship opportunities give young people the chance to gain hands on experience in various parts of the business to discover where their passions lie. Our Graduate programme is a two-year programme, and recent graduates developed their skills in our engineering, commercial, safety and operations teams. Recent graduates also completed a Chartered Management Institution course to help prepare them for future careers, with one securing permanent employment with Network Rail Scotland.

To find out more about Graduate and Intern opportunities with ScotRail, click here .

For all of our vacancies and more information about applying to and working at ScotRail, visit our Careers hub here .