We're looking for someone to help teach graduates from less privileged backgrounds to become exceptional software developers. If you have 2 years+ of professional experience as a software developer (particularly using JavaScript, Python or Ruby), have excellent communication skills and experience or interest in teaching, we'd love to hear from you. The role pays a competitive salary (£40-60k, dependending on experience), and can be full-time or contract-based.
The role will initially be remote, but we're looking for someone who can join us in our London offices once it's safe.
Sigma Labs' (https://www.sigmalabs.xyz/) mission is to put graduates from less privileged backgrounds on a high performance trajectory to become future technology leaders, if they so choose. Our first program is software engineering (data science next).
The business is founded on two beliefs:
- Exceptional talent is missed everyday: talent is equally distributed, opportunity is not. The common heuristics used to judge graduates, such as which university they attend, mean that lots of genuine talent is overlooked. We rigorously source this talent while advancing the science of assessment to ensure we find and help amazing talent. This is the first half of our mission;
- Exceptional training changes outcomes: the most effective learning practises are rarely used because the institutions that invest in the training - e.g. schools & universities – are not incentivised based upon quality of the learning. Yet Bloom’s seminal educational research proved that the right methods can change learning outcomes by 2 standard deviations (2 sigmas). This is monumental, and the focus of the second half of our mission.
We seek hardworking, curious graduates from lower income backgrounds and provide world class technical training. We then employ them for 2 years & contract them to clients who require flexible talent solutions.
The Coding Coach will be helping to build an innovative Coding Academy which:
- pushes the frontiers of ‘teaching coding’ through learning excellence and constant iteration;
- uses the most engaging and effective learning methodologies: from individual & group self-directed investigative learning to war gaming, real world problems, pupil/coach reversal, etc.
- outputs excellent junior coders after 12 weeks (with continued development part time for 2 years).
This is a role that might suit either, someone who wants to help a one-off cohort, or someone looking to grow with us longer term: initially shadowing & assisting another lead Coding Coach and ex-CTO for a cohort, with a view to leading the teaching in subsequent cohorts & ultimately helping us build a world class coding academy.
- Coaching students (individually & in groups) on all aspects of their journey learning to code;
- Regularly checking in with students, answering questions & helping them overcome problems;
- Participating in code reviews, pair programming interviews and other activities;
- Running workshops and live coding demonstrations;
- Improving and extending the curriculum, based on your own professional experiences;
- In time, training other coaches and helping the students deliver real world projects.
Obsessing over the learning & experience: effective, long lasting, inspiring, realistic and practical. Ultimately, we’ll have a graduate for 12 weeks full time, and then 2 years intermittently. In this 2 years, they we want to give them the tools to come out on top whatever happens after this.
To change the trajectory of talent from less privileged backgrounds, by providing a pivotal 2 year job.
- Experience with & knowledge of:
- fullstack web development: HTML/CSS, JavaScript, React, SQL, API design, deployment.
- development best practice: object oriented programming, automated testing, version control, agile development practices, dependency management, command line essentials;
- Minimum 2 years professional experience of software development.
- Some experience (even if informal) of teaching, training or coaching others.
- Good communication skills and confidence when presenting.
- A patient, empathetic & curious attitude.
- Experience teaching programming to adults;
- Knowledge of Deno, TypeScript, data science (concepts and tools), dev ops;
- Interest in education best practice (mastery learning, spaced repetition, flipped classrooms, etc.
As well as the opportunity to make a real impact on the lives of people from less advantaged backgrounds alongside a passionate team of coworkers, we offer:
- A competitive salary (£40-60k, dependending on experience) or day rate
- £1000 annual learning and development budget
- A flexible £50/month budget for health and wellness to go on anything from Oddbox fruit deliveries, to gyms or mental health
- Regular in-person and virtual social events