Professional Competencies

These are the professional competencies, and the underlying proficiencies, that Code Fellows hiring partners have identified as most critical for technology professional roles.

The Business Acumen Competency

Demonstrated by keen understanding of business operations and customer needs. Uses this to drive the organization towards broader business objectives, in consistent alignment with company mission and vision.

Mission and Vision Alignment: Makes decisions that align work to support the company’s and product’s vision and goals, along with the team KPIs.
Customer Orientation: Seeks customer interaction opportunities, as a customer advocate, to anticipate and discover their needs. Uses detailed information and data about the customer to deliver high quality results and add value. Views features as part of an integrated customer experience.

The Growth Mindset Competency

Demonstrated by commitment to continuous improvement through adaptability, optimism, curiosity, and openness to feedback.

Adaptability: Ability to cope with change positively and constructively. Actively seeks information to tests assumptions. Shifts approach in response to the demands of a changing situation by demonstrating resilience.
Curiosity: Demonstrates a inquisitive and wondering nature that actively digs deep to explore options and solutions. Constantly asks questions to learn more about business alignment and prioritization.
Constant Improvement: Continuously invests in personal and professional growth. Stays technically relevant by being aware of new technologies and practices. Knows the latest industry trends by reading books, blogs, attending workshops, meetups, classes and conferences.
Handling Ambiguity: Functions effectively on limited information and not fully understanding the whole picture. Finds a way forward when there aren't clear next steps and works through open ended questions while maintaining a constructive attitude in times of stress. Can participate in creation of solid design with vague requirements. Can change strategies quickly when initial approach doesn’t work.
Inclusivity: Embraces diversity of thought, work style, perspective, and experiences outside of one’s own experiences. Actively involves people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized because of race, gender, learning/physical disabilities, lifestyles, or having a different points of view. Emotionally aware and accountable when speaking up with questions and opinions.
Openness: Seeks and listens to feedback about their work, and takes appropriate action in response. Open to new ideas, processes, and ways of getting things done. Focuses on positive outcomes while taking responsibility for poor results.
Ambition and Initiative: Demonstrates personal drive without needing recognition or reward. When there is downtime, finds a productive task. Exhibits a bias for action with a strong will to accomplish task with excellence.

The Leadership Competency

Demonstrated by proficiency in influencing others by modeling accountability & integrity, building relationships, and mentoring others.

Accountability: Behaves with responsibility for one’s role with quality and timeliness of deliverables while accepting responsibility when work does not meet expectations. Works toward a high standard of performance and provides helpful context/information on demand.
Integrity: Does the right thing in a reliable way. “Wholeness” of character shows quality and honesty.
Ownership: Focuses on taking the initiative and accepting responsibility for actions and outcomes. Persistent and tenacious in delivering quality work product and thinking long term and not sacrificing value in the short-term. Embraces leadership opportunities and work on higher level responsibilities.
Mentorship: Ability to mediate in or across teams. Models good judgement and business decisions to complete work. Willingness to give or receive guidance to improve overall skills and abilities, leaving a positive impact through leading by example.
Networking: Has a active community of experts with different perspectives to help drive personal growth, product goals, and business initiatives.
Succession: Information and knowledge that is passed and shared with team members promoting a continuous workflow in ones absence.
Health and Safety: Has discipline to manage self-care through diet, exercise, relaxation, and fulfilling activities while keeping one's self and others from harm.
Confidence: Displays a positive sense of efficacy and readiness to handle stress, competitiveness, workload, instructional or orientation methods, and related associated complexities. States ideas with self-assurance and enthusiasm. Stands up for beliefs and views while preserving respect of others.Willingness to support final team decisions.
Credibility: Having earned reliability and trustworthiness to obtain collaboration and participation of others to accomplish goals. Consistently doing what you say you are going to do.

The Craft Competency

Demonstrated by proficiency in all aspects of their chosen craft, including tools, technologies, and process and methodology.

Technical: Applies engineering principles to solve complex problems through sound and creative engineering. Uses internal or industry best practices to improve technical solutions while seeking feedback. Evangelizes and teaches others to reach beyond existing solutions and technologies. Delivers high quality software that is written with pride, great skill and careful attention. Not only values working software, but well-crafted software that is easy to read, maintain and refactor. Designs, develops and delivers systems that are secure, efficient, reliable and scalable.
Process: Prioritizes and completes assigned tasks according to team's process. Consults with more senior teammates on how and when to ask for help. Aligns with team’s management style, best practices and processes. Addresses issues on-demand as a standard rule.
Innovation: Generates new ideas for meeting customer needs by effectively using customer interaction and research. Proactively identifies and manages risks within scope and resolves issues via an established process or with coaching. Develops multiple options for fulfilling customer needs.
Tool Proficiency: Makes efficient use of internal tools for version control management, log analysis, CI/CD, bug tracking, exception reporting, and debugging tools to diagnose problems and inform decisions.

The Quality Competency

Demonstrated by the ability to effectively assess quality of work including that of their own and others, using keen attention to detail. Effectively identifies the root cause of problems with rigor, provides and applies solutions that prevent recurrence.

Judgement: The ability to assess and research a problem to identify key issues, inputs, stakeholders, desired outcomes then come to a sensible logical conclusion.
Root Cause Resolution: Proactively identifies source of problems beyond the surface. involves the right people to analyze the problem, and tracks the chain of events that lead to the failure. Offers and implements appropriate solutions.

The Communication Competency

Demonstrated by proficiency in written and verbal communications, active listening, and exchanging ideas/knowledge.

Writing: Ability to sum up complex ideas, problems, or solutions with effective style. Engages and influences the audience with clarity and persuasiveness.
Reading: Ability to comprehend task instructions, bug reports, and emails. Locates and understands internal and external documentation.
Speaking: Articulates effectively and confidently. Expresses in a clear and outlined manner how ideas fits into wider scenarios.
Listening: Has patience to not interrupt, takes turns speaking, pays close attention to what is being shared, and maintains eye contact. Uses listening cues such as nodding to show engagement. Acknowledges concerns and different perspectives of others.

The Teamwork Competency

Demonstrated by the commitment to team success by building collaborative relationships and adhering to team goals.

Collaboration: Actively works with others to produce or create something in a friendly and professional manner on behalf of the entire company, beyond own team or self. Seeks to ensure the team understands the business value of every story by sharing knowledge and expertise with other team members. Consistently tries to improve code quality by seeking pair programming opportunities.

The Results Competency

Demonstrated by proficiency in planning and prioritizing to overcome obstacles, solve problems, and achieve results on schedule.

Agile: Passionate about developing and delivering high quality code that is easy to read and maintain. Refactors code to improve the quality. Habitually applies agile development principles, displaying a solid understanding of agile processes, reports, and metrics, and how to use them.
Organizational: Across-team collaborator that combines efforts and resources to achieve company-wide initiatives.
Creative: Procedurally suggests improvements that could increase the velocity of software delivery. Is open to new ideas and willing to appropriately challenge the status quo.
Project Execution: Defines what it takes to accomplish the project requirements by coordinating people and resources, then performing in accordance to the project plan.
Analytical Thinking: Identifies and defines problems, extracting key information from data and develops workable solutions in order to isolate, test, and verify the problem and solution.
Prioritization: Establishes and ranks deliverables based on project plan, product objectives, and business impact.
Problem Solving: Proactively foresees and mitigates potential blocking issues, while finding solutions to difficult problems by researching and collaborating with the team members. Remains solution focused but knows when to escalate.
Incremental Delivery: Applies code management techniques that enable uninterrupted delivery in a series of gradual releases until the project is complete. Understands and advocates for the use and implementation of automation to reduce waste and errors in the process of delivering solutions.
Decision Making: Actively seeks to understand customer impression of products and services to integrate feedback into project plan. Synthesizes different perspectives to create a relevant solutions that drives the business impact.
Appropriate Autonomy: Can be trusted with decision making over topics related to scope of work. Operates without supervision after learning to align with company goals. Seeks input from leaders when appropriate.
Planning and Estimating: Understands product development roadmap scope to identify and suggest optimal resources, materials, and related documents. Develops and communicates sound plan by determining the time, complexity, and processes required to successfully achieve the final outcome.
Dependability and Reliability: Demonstrates personal accountability for quality and timeliness of deliverables. Manages available resources to complete projects efficiently and on time.