Tech jobs you can get at 16 (and at 18)

Here's the honest answer, because you deserve one rather than a list of jobs that don't exist. Tech is thin at 16: most IT employers - service desks, managed service providers, in-house teams, apprenticeship schemes - open their doors at 18, which is why the FIRSTJOBZ board lists roles for over-18s only. So read this page as a map instead of a shop window, showing what's genuinely open to you elsewhere at 16 and 17 then everything waiting on your eighteenth birthday.

Why the door is narrow at 16 and 17

It isn't snobbery. It's mostly practicalities stacked on top of each other.

Support work runs on shifts and cover. The law limits when under-18s can be at work: staff aged 16 or 17 cannot work between midnight and 4am at all and usually cannot work between 10pm and 6am, though a contract can shift that window to 11pm until 7am instead. Any team running an out-of-hours rota therefore finds it simpler to hire adults. Add client sites, lone working, DBS checks for anything based in schools or the NHS plus driving for field roles and you can see why the advert says 18.

The rules are tighter again if you're still under school leaving age - 16 but still in year 11, say. You count as a child worker then. You can't work during school hours, before 7am or after 7pm, or for more than 12 hours in a term-time week: 2 hours on school days and Sundays, with up to 8 hours on a Saturday once you're 15 or 16. School holidays loosen to a maximum of 35 hours a week at 15 and 16, still capped at 2 hours on Sundays. You're entitled to an hour's break after 4 hours of work and to a 2-week stretch of the holidays completely free of work each calendar year. Some councils also ask your employer to register the arrangement, so don't be startled if a work permit comes up.

Once you're past year 11 you're a young worker rather than a child worker. Full-time becomes legal, up to 40 hours a week, though in England you'll stay in some form of part-time education or training until you're 18.

What's genuinely open at 16 and 17 (and how those jobs get found)

Plenty is open. It just isn't on a jobs board and it isn't the tech job you pictured.

Tech-adjacent counter work is the closest thing to the real article. Phone shops, electronics retailers, computer and phone repair counters, anywhere selling or mending gadgets. The pay is retail pay rather than tech pay, but you'll spend a year practising the half of an IT job that most applicants never practise: staying patient with a frustrated stranger, explaining something simply, handling somebody else's expensive device without fuss. IT managers understand that translation instantly.

Volunteering where the tech is comes second. School AV and production crews, community centres, charities, a local theatre group's sound and lighting, a family friend's small business website. Real troubleshooting under real pressure with no chance to reboot the room. Unpaid work is still work history and volunteering is one door that genuinely does open before 18.

Then there's anything at all with a rota attached. A till, a kitchen, a warehouse, a paper round that turns into weekend shifts. It proves you can hold a job down and hands you a reference, which counts for more with a tech employer than another six months of theory.

Here's the part nobody spells out: those jobs get found in person. You walk in with a printed CV at a quiet hour and ask whether the manager's around. You tell every adult you know that you're looking. You ask your school or college careers lead what work experience they can arrange, because a placement with a local IT team is far easier to set up at 16 than a paid role. You read the shop windows, the community noticeboard, the local Facebook groups your mum is already in. None of that runs through our board. It runs through your feet, your school and the people who already know your name.

What unlocks at 18 - and where FIRSTJOBZ comes in

Your eighteenth birthday changes more in tech than in almost any other industry.

The money moves first. Your legal minimum becomes £10.85 an hour automatically, no promotion required. Plenty of IT employers pay juniors above the floor anyway. Our tech pay guide breaks down the full ladder and what lifts you off it.

The rota opens second. Adult working-time rules replace the young-worker night limits, so early shifts, late cover, weekend maintenance windows and on-call rotas all become available. That matters because unsociable hours are exactly where the premiums live in IT.

The front doors open third. First-line and service desk roles, managed service provider vacancies, IT apprenticeships, school leaver programmes at larger employers, field engineer positions, junior developer and tester jobs: the entire entry-level layer of British tech is broadly aimed at 18-plus. On your birthday you go from applying to a handful of things to applying to all of them.

Which is where we come in. FIRSTJOBZ is the 18-plus destination sitting at the end of these two years, so from 18 you can browse live tech jobs and see that whole layer in one place instead of hunting it down shop by shop. Nothing on it is for under-18s. Everything on it is for the person you'll be shortly.

Arrive at 18 ready

Two years is a long time. Spend it stacking the four things a first tech employer actually looks at.

Build a portfolio. This is the single highest-value use of the wait, because tech is one of the very few industries that will look at what you made instead of where you worked. Build a PC. Set up an old laptop as a home server. Write something small in Python that solves an actual annoyance. Break it, fix it, write down what you learned. Two honest projects you can talk about for five minutes each will beat a stronger candidate with nothing to show, every time. Our no-experience guide explains exactly how employers read that evidence.

Collect references. One manager who'll answer the phone about you is worth a page of adjectives. Ask before you leave any job or placement, save their email and stay on good terms.

Get courses done. Free and low-cost online courses in networking, security fundamentals, Python and hardware are everywhere. Nobody will hire you for a certificate alone, but finishing one proves you learn things when nobody is forcing you, which is the exact trait screened for at entry.

Sort your availability and your admin. Work out what shifts you could genuinely cover once the night limits lift, because flexibility is half of what a service desk is buying. You can apply for your provisional driving licence from 15 years and 9 months, then start learning to drive a car once you turn 17. Field engineer work is van-based, so a licence quietly widens the list of jobs open to you the moment you're old enough for them.

The common questions, answered straight

Can you get an IT apprenticeship at 16? Occasionally, though most tech apprenticeship intakes are pitched at 18-plus for the same shift and site reasons as everything else. Check the individual advert rather than assuming either way, apply if the door is open and treat it as a bonus rather than the plan.

Do you need computer science GCSE or A-level? No. It helps and it's interesting, but the industry is full of people who studied something else entirely or nothing at all. What matters is evidence you can think through problems and explain things, which is why the portfolio route works regardless of your timetable.

So don't read a narrow door as a closed one. Start where the door is genuinely open now: the counter job, the volunteering, the placement your school can arrange, the projects nobody asked you to build. Head back to the tech hub for the CV, interview and routes guides while you're waiting. The board will be there on your eighteenth birthday. So will the whole entry-level layer of the industry. You'll arrive holding something to show.