Become a mentor
Teach the thing you wish someone had told you
Two hours a week with someone who is exactly where you were before it clicked. Paid, remote, and structured so it fits around a full-time engineering job.
- 2 hrs
- Paid
- Remote
- 1–2
The role
What we would ask of you
Mentoring at Upkora is technical work, not motivational speaking. Four things make up the job.
Read their code properly
A weekly review of what they actually built, with the kind of feedback you would give a junior on your own team. Specific, direct, and about the work.
Unblock the things that stall people
Most learners lose weeks to one problem they cannot name. Your job is to spot it in ten minutes and hand back the rest of their week.
Hold the standard
Show up on time, notice when someone has gone quiet, and say when work is not good enough yet. Being liked is not the job. Being useful is.
Prepare them for the room
Mock interviews, portfolio framing and honest guidance on what a hiring manager in your field will actually care about.
Fit
Who we look for
We are picky about this, because a bad pairing costs a learner a cohort they paid for.
- Currently working
- You are employed or contracting in the field you would mentor in, and have been for at least three years. We do not take full-time educators who left the industry.
- Explains without condescending
- The single thing we screen hardest for. Technical depth is easy to verify. Making someone feel capable while telling them their approach is wrong is not.
- Says the hard thing
- A mentor who tells everyone their project is great is worse than no mentor. We need people who will say when something is not ready.
- Reliable for a full cohort
- Programmes run for a fixed term. We need you for the whole of it. If your workload is about to spike, start with the next cohort instead.
- Our tracks
- Cloud engineering, AI and machine learning, software development, and compliance. If your speciality sits next to one of those, get in touch anyway.
Process
How to join
Four steps, usually inside two weeks, and you can stop at any point.
Step one
Send us a note
Email us with what you work on now, how long you have done it, which track you would mentor and roughly how much time you have. A CV or profile link is enough. No cover letter.
Step two
A 30 minute conversation
We talk about your background and what you would want out of mentoring. You get to ask what the commitment really involves before anyone is on a schedule.
Step three
A teaching sample
We give you a short piece of learner code with a real problem in it and ask how you would give the feedback. We are watching how you say it, not whether you spot the bug.
Step four
Onboarding and your first pairing
A short onboarding on how we run sessions, our Code of Conduct and safeguarding expectations, then we match you with a learner before their cohort begins.
What you get out of it
Start with an email
Tell us what you work on and which track you would mentor. A short note is plenty to start.