This Summer, Major League Hacking (MLH) is launching the Production Engineering Track of the MLH Fellowship, powered by Facebook. This is a 12-week educational program that will use industry leading curriculum from the Linux Foundation Training & Certification and hands-on project-based learning to teach students how to become Production Engineers. The program will provide opportunities to 100 aspiring software engineers to broaden their skills and career options, by learning important Production Engineering and DevOps skills. The program will run between June 7 – August 30, 2021 and will be open to United States, Mexico, and Canada based students who are enrolled in a 4 year degree granting program. Applications are open and will run until May 28, 2021.
What is Production Engineering anyway?
Early career software engineers are passionate and motivated to learn new skills and create a positive impact on the world, but many have not been exposed to the wider array of career options that are available to them. Production Engineering, also known as Site Reliability Engineering and DevOps, is one of the most in-demand skill sets that leading technology companies are hiring for, yet it is not widely available as an educational option in university settings.
Production Engineers (PEs) at Facebook are a hybrid between software and systems engineers and are core to engineering efforts that keep Facebook running smoothly and scaling efficiently. PEs work within Facebook’s product and infrastructure teams to make sure their products and services are reliable and scalable. This means writing code and debugging hard problems in production systems across Facebook services like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus as well as backend services like Storage, Cache and Network.
What is the Production Engineering Track of the MLH Fellowship?
Initially launched in Summer 2020, the MLH Fellowship pairs early career software engineers with widely used open source projects like React, Jest, Docusaurus. This gives them the opportunity to apply their knowledge to real world projects, which helps them learn important concepts and patterns while also having production-level code to showcase in their portfolio. Through the Fellowship, MLH has created opportunities for hundreds of developers from around the world to level up and hone their skills in a 12-week cohort surrounded by peers and expert mentors. The Production Engineering Track takes this proven model and expands it to a broader range of technology disciplines, creating even more valuable opportunities for developers starting off their careers.
Program participants will gain practical skills thanks to educational content from Linux Foundation Training & Certification’s LFS201 – Essentials of System Administration training course, which covers how to administer, configure and upgrade Linux systems, along with the tools and concepts necessary to efficiently build and manage a production Linux infrastructure. By pairing this industry leading curriculum with hands-on project-based learning, students in the Production Engineering Track can build on their foundational software engineering knowledge to learn a broader array of technology skills and open the door to a variety of exciting and challenging new career options. Creating these types of non-traditional learning experiences helps empower developers from many diverse backgrounds and educational institutions to accelerate their careers and make an impact on the world.
Who is eligible?
The Production Engineering Track starts in June, and guarantees a $3,600 educational stipend to each participant. Applications are open now until May 28, 2021. Eligible students are rising sophomores or juniors who are United States, Mexico, and Canada based, enrolled in a 4 year degree granting program, and able to code. MLH invites and encourages people to apply who identify as women or non-binary. MLH also invites and encourages people to apply who identify as Black/African American or LatinX. In partnership with Facebook, MLH is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive tech industry and providing learning opportunities to under-represented technologists.