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Meet Sydney and find out about her role working for His Majesty's Coastguard. Part of our Bitesize world of work series.

Here at the Coastguard we do training before we qualify鈥 you learn on the job so it doesn鈥檛 matter if you鈥檙e not from a maritime background.
Four images of Sydney at work.
  • Sydney responds to 999 and mayday calls from people in distress at sea
  • A typical day involves communicating with lots of different people, including members of the public, the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) and independent lifeboats, the National Coastwatch Institution, and vessels at sea, co-ordinating responses to help people in need
  • As a student, Sydney worked as a RNLI lifeguard at the beach during the summers. In this role, she listened to the Coastguard over the team radio and thought it would be an interesting career, but she was worried about her lack of maritime knowledge
  • After seeing an online job advert, Sydney realised that prior maritime knowledge wasn鈥檛 a requirement for the maritime operations officer role. When she started the job, there was lots of training offered
  • At GCSE, Sydney didn鈥檛 really enjoy Maths as she couldn鈥檛 see how she'd use what she was learning in real life. Now, she's grateful that she learnt those maths skills as she uses them every day, when doing chart work, calculations and working out tidal patterns. Her ICT skills from school are also useful, as she monitors up to five screens at a time
  • Summer's the busiest time of the year, with an increase in calls from members of the public in difficulty at the beach and on the coast
  • Sydney鈥檚 favourite part of the job is seeing an operation through from start to finish, from taking the initial distress call to finding out the person has been safely rescued.
Four images of Sydney at work.
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Maritime operations officers (MOOs) work for His Majesty's Coastguard, which is part of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA).

What to expect if you want to be a maritime operations officer

  • Maritime operations officer average salary: 拢23,847 + allowances
  • Maritime operations officer typical working hours: On average the shift pattern equates to 37 duty hours per week over a 12-month period. It could include evenings, bank holidays and weekends.

What qualifications do you need to be coastguard?

No formal qualifications are required to become a Maritime Operations Officer. All you need is a passion for helping others, to be IT literate and have a good standard of Math and Literacy. To be successful, you will need to complete literacy, numeracy and IT skills tests. Maritime experience is not essential, but you will have to have reached your 18th birthday before you can start in role (to comply with the shift working requirement). Maritime and Coastguard Agency roles are advertised on the .

Career Progression

Once you鈥檝e started your career as a Maritime Operations Officer, and following 12-18 months of on-the-job training, you will gain your maritime operations officer qualification. At this point, you may want to progress your career by moving to a senior maritime operations officer role and then to team leader. Alternatively, you could explore other opportunities within the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.

Source: The Maritime and Coastguard Agency.

This information is a guide and is constantly changing. Please check the and the for the latest information and vacancies.

For careers advice in all parts of the UK visit: , , and .

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