Software Engineer

Fundamentals first
1 to 5 years of professional experience in software development. This includes full-time roles, co-ops, or equivalent hands-on work in a team environment.
Solid understanding of programming concepts: data structures, control flow, functions, and how programs execute.
Ability to reason through a problem, break it down, and explain your thinking.
Basic understanding of how the web works: HTTP, client-server communication, and APIs.
Familiarity with relational databases and how data is stored and queried.
Comfortable using version control (Git) for basic workflows.
Mindset over experience
Learns quickly and applies feedback without needing the same correction twice.
Takes ownership - follows through on tasks and flags blockers early rather than going quiet.
Willing to step outside the assigned scope: helps a teammate, investigates an edge case, and improves a doc without being asked.
Honest about what they know and what they do not; asks for help at the right time.
Comfortable with ambiguity - not everything will be perfectly specified, and that is okay.
Nice to Have
We do not expect all of these - any one of them tells us something positive about your drive and curiosity.
Internship or co-op experience in a software team, even briefly.
Personal or academic side projects you built and can talk about.
Exposure to any backend language (Go, Python, [protected info], Java, PHP) or frontend framework (Vue, React, or Angular).
Basic familiarity with Docker or cloud services - even from a tutorial or course.
Contributions to open source, a hackathon project, or a team capstone.
Soft Skills
Curious and self-driven - always asking why, not just how; looks things up before asking, but knows when to ask.
Team player - shares context, helps colleagues without being prompted, and cares about the team's output as much as their own.
Honest and direct - surfaces problems early, admits mistakes, and does not pretend to know things they do not.
Hard-working - puts in the effort needed to get things right; does not cut corners when the going gets difficult.