Software Engineer Apprenticeship Program

Open Positions

We have apprenticeships in both design and software development. We'll be opening our apprentice program shortly, so check back soon!

About The Program

Why pursue a design or engineering apprenticeship at Made in Tandem?

If you have no prior professional experience as a programmer or designer, but have gone through a degree program or bootcamp, Made in Tandem’s design and engineering apprenticeship program can help take you from basic knowledge to being a full-fledged contributor in one of our practice areas. Apprenticeship positions are paid and include health insurance, three weeks of paid time off, and other benefits.

As an apprentice, you will spend the bulk of your time pairing directly with senior engineers and designers working on real client projects. You’ll contribute to several different projects throughout the course of the program — we believe that this variety allows exposure to an array of technologies, people, techniques, and tools.

We will also help you build professional skills in consulting, refine your communication and collaboration abilities, and spend time on learning efforts like reading, blogging, and personal projects.

Apprenticeship Benefits

Competitive salary

100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision plans

Learning budget

3 weeks paid time off

100% employer-paid life insurance, short-term disability, and long-term disability policies

A 40-hour workweek

Philosophy

Our Apprentice Journey

Throughout your apprenticeship journey, you will be supported by a kind, collaborative group of teammates who value your perspective and skills. As a design or engineering apprentice, our goal is to ensure you have the opportunities you need to succeed in your career.

Client-Facing Project-Based Learning

At Made in Tandem, all team members—including apprentices—interact face-to-face with our clients. You’ll learn how to confidently communicate with clients, how to present your work for review, and how to approach the problems we solve with an eye toward each client’s fundamental business goals.

Professional Development

Apprentices are not the only ‘learners’ at Made in Tandem: all employees are given a learning budget, so you can invest in conferences, books, videos, new software, machinery, or events that help expand your skills. Throughout your time at Tandem, you will learn—and teach—every day.

Feedback

Throughout the year, every Made in Tandem teammate gives and receives written feedback that is Actionable, Specific, and Kind (ASK). To accelerate your growth and learning as an apprentice, you will receive informal feedback on a daily basis through pairing check-ins, 1-on-1 meetings with mentors, and our ‘kudos’ Slack channel. Apprentices will receive formal written feedback from their managers and teammates, and complete a self-assessment, every three months until promotion to level 1. As an apprentice, you’ll also learn how to give constructive feedback to your teammates.

Career Growth

We typically expect apprentices to be in the program for 3 to 12 months depending on skill level and progress. By the end of a year, all of our apprentices will be ready for the next step on our career path (a Software Engineer I or Product Designer I role).

Basic Principles

Being a Made in Tandem software engineer is about more than just writing code—our engineers participate in the design process, product development, and business growth activities. Your apprenticeship will give you a solid foundation in the following principles:

Agile Development Practices

Learn how we use both Scrum and Kanban practices in our work depending on the problem we’re solving and the client we’re working with
Become proficient with a tracking tools like Pivotal or JIRA
Participate in all of our agile ceremonies including:
- Daily client stand-ups
- Weekly retros
- Weekly sprint reviews and planning
- Story writing sessions.

Software

Write a lot of frontend and backend code
Learn our Git workflow:
- Commit early and often with descriptive messages
- Open and merge pull requests
- Review your teammates’ code
- Deploy to staging and production environments
- Configure hosting platforms
- Manage our continuous integration services
- Build a lot of software.

Consulting

Get plenty of face-to-face time with the client through Tandem’s work process
Learn how to confidently handle positive client communication in person, emails and standard meetings.
Learn how to provide constructive client feedback when needed.

Check back soon for details!

Class Curriculum

Engineering
Design

Engineering Curriculum

You will learn on the job, but for deep-dive conversations and to build a solid technical foundation, engineering apprentices attend bi-monthly classes on a technical topic.

Engineering Apprenticeship Classes

Agile software development and frameworks (Scrum and Kanban)
Version control
Organizing your developer workflow
Estimation
Data modeling
Relational database and SQL principles
Inheritance and composition
Unit testing
CI/CD
Semantic HTML and CSS

Check back soon for details!

How We’ll Support You

Engineering
Design

Multiple Levels of Support

Your first professional job as an engineer does not have to be overwhelming! Throughout your apprenticeship, we will provide multiple levels of support to help you feel confident:

Cohorts

We typically hire cohorts of two engineering apprentices at a time. This is to create camaraderie, quickly grow our team, and help alleviate imposter syndrome by strength in numbers. There is no competition between the apprentices, our hope is that both will continue their careers with our company.

Management

You will also have an engineering manager, who is responsible for managing your overall career growth, salary and promotions, time-off requests, and long-term goals, as well as providing additional support for you and your mentor. Your manager will facilitate your formal performance reviews every three months.

Non-billable time

We think it’s important for apprentices to have regular time to focus on things they can’t learn directly on a client project or in a pair. You’ll take non-billable time weekly so you can focus on and build skills that will help you in your career as a software consultant.

Mentorship

On your first day, you will be assigned a mentor to support you throughout your apprenticeship. Your mentor will meet with you frequently to help track your progress, identify your strengths, and set achievable goals. This person is responsible for your daily growth and well being, and will provide you resources that enable you to achieve your learning goals.