About the program
Are you up for a tremendous learning curve? Are you willing to put in that extra bit of effort to become the best developer you can be? Then our program might be right for you.
Our next cohorts and are open for university students at the beginning of their studies. University-specific calls for application are sent to students of the partner institutions.
The traineeship is a 12-month part-time program that runs in parallel to university. It is extremely intense and time-consuming. Going through it in parallel to your studies is a challenge - but it is a challenge that will help you grow not only as a software developer but also academically.
After completion of the 12-month core training successful graduates receive a certificate of completion and are invited into the project-phase of their traineeship. The project-phase last until the graduation from the participant's university. Since participants of the core training are at the start of their studies, the project phase it usually lasts around 2 years.
During the project-phase participants continue receiving coaching by The Gym and support and reviews from international senior developers.
The project-phase allows participants to grow to the level of an intermediate software developer - by international standards. This puts them into an outstanding position for the start of their career after graduation from university.
The Gym supports the placement of graduates of the project-phase, in international software development companies, for remote work positions in their distributed teams.
Our next cohorts and are open for university students at the beginning of their studies. University-specific calls for application are sent to students of the partner institutions.
The traineeship is a 12-month part-time program that runs in parallel to university. It is extremely intense and time-consuming. Going through it in parallel to your studies is a challenge - but it is a challenge that will help you grow not only as a software developer but also academically.
After completion of the 12-month core training successful graduates receive a certificate of completion and are invited into the project-phase of their traineeship. The project-phase last until the graduation from the participant's university. Since participants of the core training are at the start of their studies, the project phase it usually lasts around 2 years.
During the project-phase participants continue receiving coaching by The Gym and support and reviews from international senior developers.
The project-phase allows participants to grow to the level of an intermediate software developer - by international standards. This puts them into an outstanding position for the start of their career after graduation from university.
The Gym supports the placement of graduates of the project-phase, in international software development companies, for remote work positions in their distributed teams.
The traineeship is an in-person program. Sessions are held on the campus of the participants' respective universities. A remote option is not available.
Participants need to bring their own laptops to be able to take part in the training. The Gym cannot provide them with devices.
Location and Laptops
The traineeship is an in-person program. Sessions are held on the campus of the participants' respective universities. A remote option is not available.
Participants need to bring their own laptops to be able to take part in the training. The Gym cannot provide them with devices.
Tuition-scholarships
All trainees receive a full tuition-scholarship for this training. The training is entirely free for them.
No other allowances or financial support are provided by The Gym.
All trainees receive a full tuition-scholarship for this training. The training is entirely free for them.
No other allowances or financial support are provided by The Gym.
Jobs after graduation
In its past cohorts The Gym has managed to place all its graduates with international software development companies, for which they work remotely from Kigali.
The Gym will continue providing the same intensive level of placement support to future cohorts. It is our goal to continue upholding this placement track record for all successful graduates.
In its past cohorts The Gym has managed to place all its graduates with international software development companies, for which they work remotely from Kigali.
The Gym will continue providing the same intensive level of placement support to future cohorts and is confident to be able to uphold this placement track record for all successful graduates.
Requirements for applicants
We expect you to bring:
- Relentless passion for software development.
- Willingness to invest a very high volume of time and energy into building your skills as a developer.
- Willingness to embrace open and direct communication paradigms, a detailed approach to task-management and a high standard of reliability and quality of work.
- Strong foundations in software development. These could have been acquired through a bootcamp (e.g. Microverse, SheCanCode, kLab) or a similar program (e.g. Andela Technical Leadership Program) or in self-study and practical project work.
- Very good English skills. You need to be able to explain and understand technical concepts in English with ease. You need to be able to read technical documentations and tech-related articles, write clear messages with technical updates and compose documentation notes.
Application and Selection Process
1. Applications
Students of partner universities will receive an application form dedicated to their university's cohort. In the application form you will be required to record a short video of yourself, so we can verify your English proficiency, provide a link to your codewars.com profile showcasing that you have solved a few simple algorithm challenges and share a bit of information about yourself.
2. Assessment
The best applicants will be invited to an assessment. The assessment consists of a technical interview and a personal interview. The technical interview contains theoretical questions about JavaScript Fundamentals and a coding challenge that you will be required to solve in real time.
Whoever passes this assessment gets admitted as a trainee to The Gym.
During the traineeship period, there will be several interim assessments that you need to pass, to prove that you have mastered the contents of the past months.
Traineeship curriculum in detail
Methodology
Many sessions will be held in groups of 5, a few team-building exercises and presentations will be conducted with the entire cohort, and you will receive weekly one-on-one coaching sessions both for your coding skill development and for your professional skill development.
Level of difficulty
While we expect all trainees to have solid software development foundations, some trainees will come in already being more advanced than others. Therefore, all our exercises have flexible levels of difficulty, ensuring everyone gets challenged to the maximum of their capacity.
Instructors and coaches
Your instructors and coaches will be a mix of Rwandan and international developers and IT managers as sell as tech leads with many years of experience working in the digital industry.
Schedule
The exact schedule of each cohort is adapted to the hours of the participants' respective universities. An approximate work volume of 20-25 hours a week will be expected.
- Project work takes up about 40-60% of your time.
- Training sessions in your group or in one-on-ones take up 10-20% of your time.
- The remaining time is used for self-study based on the materials and exercises we provide you with.
Contents
A more detailed curriculum will be shared with participants at the beginning of the training.
Coming into the traineeship you already have strong foundations in software development. We will help you solidify those foundations even further, give you the chance to build your coding muscles on exercises and projects and help you get the additional skills you need to work effectively as a developer on projects for international clients.
- Algorithm training (in JavaScript).
- React.js
- Node.js
- TailwindCSS
- Very strong foundations in plain JavaScript. You need to have clear mental models of all aspects of the language.
Please note that we do not provide you with an introduction into the technologies mentioned above. We expect you to already be familiar with JavaScript, React.js and node.js. The traineeship is about deepening your understanding and practicing your skills to get to the level of international projects.
Beyond that we put great focus on:
- Test Driven Development, Unit Tests, Integration Tests.
- CI/CD pipelines with various tools.
- Principles of UX for web development and working in Figma.
- Principles of QA.
- Advanced use of git and github
We will also ensure you have a very effective developer workflow and understand everything about:
- Work-breakdown structure for software development projects.
- Best practices of developer workflows, code review and QA processes.
- CI/CD pipelines with various tools.
- Principles of UX for web development and working in Figma.
- Trello, Jira, Confluence and related tools.
We want you to be familiar with the main tools used in the digital industry and also gain the ability to quickly and effectively teach yourself to use a new tool.
- API tools such as zapier and postmaster.
- Image editing tools such as gimp and scribus.
- Collaboration tools such as notion, monday.com or airtable, and many more.
Throughout the core program we will guide you through projects with increasing complexity to teach you:
- Collaboration in an agile team, consensus finding, putting the success of the team first, feedbacks and retrospectives
- Spitting up tasks, defining components and other architectural decisions, in a way that works collaboratively, git flow, peer reviews and related communication best practices.
We conduct daily exercises for typical communication situations on client projects, including:
- Giving written and oral work updates.
- Giving and receiving briefings.
- The remaining time is used for self-study based on the materials and exercises we provide you with.
- Clear and effective communication in meetings.
- Communicating problems and blockers.
- Giving and receiving feedback.
- Preparing and giving presentations on advanced technical topics.
- Preparing and giving presentations on project progress and technical features.
You will receive in-depth trainings and ample opportunity to practice and get feedback on the following general professional skills:
- Task management.
- Time management.
- Digital project management.
- Agile product development methodologies.
- Effective research of technological topics.
- Effective reading of technology related articles.
- General mental agility: creativity, improvisation, speed, logical thinking, structured problem solving.
You receive frequent personal coaching sessions in which your professional skill development and your performance in the traineeship are evaluated together with you and your coach helps you find ways to further improve and speed up your growth.