Overview

The JEA isn’t a coding bootcamp or an internship program. You’ll be employed as a bona fide engineer on a full-time basis at Disco Labs at a market salary, and be entitled to all of the same benefits as other Disco teammates. This includes flexible work, company days off, profit sharing, and personal development opportunities.

Benefits

The JEA provides junior engineers with:

• A structured six-month learning program, to help them become confident, independent, capable and creative Ruby developers;
• A cohort of fellow engineers to learn with;
• Dedicated buddies and mentors;
• The chance to work on greenfield real-world projects, on key product areas, to own from beginning to end;
• A combination of focused learning, self-led discovery and writing code with Disco development teams;
• A flat hierarchy — everyone’s voice is equal;
• Ongoing learning and growth opportunities beyond the junior program;
• Opportunities to get your hands dirty and contribute to production code in your first cycle;
• A clear pathway to progress as a Disco engineer, either as an individual contributor or a leader;
• Opportunities to specialise in areas outside of “crunching code”;
• A commitment to always provide the autonomy to explore, with the support to grow.

Structure

The first three months represents the most intensive part of the six-month program. Your time is split 40/60 between dedicated learning time and real-world development inside an active Disco team.

Learning time two days a week

• Learning as a cohort;
• Sessions led by a mix of internal and external mentors, as well as free time for the cohort to experiment and play by themselves;
• Constant feedback loop, with adjustments to program content and cadence to best suit the cohort;
• Initial focus on development fundamentals, but progressing to cover all aspects of Disco Labs development, from devops to design;
• Homework to be completed outside of synchronous sessions, and reviewed in subsequent learning time.

Team time three days a week

• Integration into Disco development teams, working on real-world problems, in a production environment;
• Regular pairing with senior developers;
• Opportunities to work solo;
• Involvement in adjacent sessions, such as architecture discussions and devops activities.

In months four to six, you’ll continue to work on real-world projects with the rest of the Disco team, alongside a learning program tailored to your specific needs.

There’s no end date past month six, either - you’ll be continuing to work with us and given the same opportunities as every other Disco engineer for growth and career development.

Applications

Applications are now closed for our October / November 2021 cohort.

You can email us to be notified when we reopen applications for future cohorts - see below.

Requirements

Our only requirements for applicants are that you:

• are a communicator, who recognises that developing great products requires teamwork and close collaboration, not just code;
• are curious and motivated, and like to dive deep into problems and learn new things;
• have some experience building web applications using Ruby on Rails, or a similar framework.

Disco Labs has a strong commitment to being a safe, diverse and inclusive workplace and we encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds.

We welcome applications from remote candidates; you must have the right to work in Australia and be located in a timezone within 3 hours of Melbourne.

Process

1. Application submission

Our process kicks off with a simple email to introduce yourself and provide a CV, alongside links to any projects or code you’ve worked on previously.

2. Initial chat

After reviewing your initial application, Disco will invite candidates to have a “getting to you know you” call.

This is an informal chat with Dave (our Technical Director) and one of the other members of our development team. It’ll run for 30 minutes, doesn’t require any preparation, and is focused on us getting to know each other a bit better.

3. Technical interview

If we both decide we’re a good fit, you’ll be invited to undertake our technical interview.

Our technical interviews aren’t a whiteboarding exercise or a test of what archaic algorithmic knowledge you have in your head. We want to know what it will be like to work with you on real-world things that actually impact clients.

We’re not just assessing the code you write, but also the way you go about it - the effort you go to to understand the problem domain, the background behind the project, your communication with others, and how well you follow Disco’s standard development processes and practices.

The interview is conducted asynchronously through Github (so you’ll be able to ask questions, do research, and work through it at your own pace - just like real life). We anticipate that the process should take no longer than 4-5 hours of your time, assuming familiarity with standard Ruby on Rails development processes. No Shopify knowledge is assumed.

4. Final interview

Candidates who complete the technical interview to a high standard will be invited to a final round interview.

This will consist of an hour-long discussion with Dave, our Technical Director, where he’ll dive deep with you on your the technical interview and answer any additional questions you may have about the technical side of Disco.

There’ll also be a second hour of 20-minute calls to get to meet some of the other team members - engineers, project managers, and our CEO Gavin. In addition to learning more about your potential future teammates, you can ask them any questions you may have about Disco.

As part of this final round of interviews, we’ll also contact your references.

5. Offer

If stars align, we’ll make you an offer to join the JEA on the next cohort start date.

Apply now

Applications for our October/November cohort are now closed. Please feel free to email jobs@discolabs.com to introduce yourself and tell us why you’d be excited to join Disco’s JEA if you’d like to be notified when we next open up applications.