Standard operating procedure

New Software Engineer First-Week Onboarding

Following this procedure guarantees that a new engineer has secure access, contributes their first code, receives mentorship, and has aligned expectations by the end of week one.

Owner Engineering ManagerTrigger Offer acceptance and confirmed start dateReview Reviewed quarterly by the Engineering Leadership Team

Applies to all new full-time software engineers from Day 1 to Day 5. Does not apply to contractors, interns, or non-engineering roles.

Procedure

  1. 1
    Provision GitHub, Slack, Jira, and cloud console access
    IT Ops LeadIT Service Desk Portal
    Done when The new engineer receives login credentials and can successfully log into all four systems
  2. 2
    Configure and ship hardware (laptop, monitor, peripherals)
    IT Ops LeadShipping Carrier
    Done when The engineer confirms receipt of the package and the device boots to the desktop
  3. 3
    Assign a buddy based on team rotation and expertise
    Engineering ManagerHRIS System
    Done when The buddy is notified via Slack and the assignment is recorded in the onboarding tracker
  4. 4
    Conduct the initial buddy introduction meeting
    BuddyVideo Conferencing Tool
    Done when The agenda (tools, team intro, first week goals) is reviewed and the new engineer has the buddy's contact info
  5. 5
    Guide the engineer to a 'good first issue' in Jira
    BuddyJira
    Done when The engineer has claimed a ticket labeled 'good-first-issue' and added it to their local board
  6. 6
    Walk through the local development environment setup
    BuddyLocal Development Environment
    Done when The engineer runs the application locally without errors
  7. 7
    Submit the first pull request
    New EngineerGitHub
    Done when The pull request is created and linked to the Jira ticket
  8. 8
    Perform the first code review
    BuddyGitHub
    Done when The pull request has at least one approving comment or requested changes
  9. 9
    Merge the first pull request to the main branch
    BuddyGitHub
    Done when The PR is merged and the CI pipeline passes
  10. 10
    Conduct the Day-5 checkpoint meeting
    Engineering ManagerVideo Conferencing Tool
    Done when The meeting notes are saved and the new engineer confirms their goals for week two

If something goes wrong