This page is for those of you who are looking for or considering a Summer Job or other Junior Developer positions at Reaktor. Please check out our junior job postings for general information. We wrote this page because we want you to succeed and partly because we want great applications that also make our jobs a bit easier.
If you’re looking for challenges, fun and learning while doing some real-world work with our clients, this might be for you! However, it makes sense to ask yourself a couple of questions:
- Do I want to team up with the brightest minds in the software scene, and face the challenge of working with our clients? read more
- Can I roughly match at least, say, 7 of the top 10 requirements in the tech skills section below
- Can I demonstrate my skills with existing code I’ve written? If not, am I willing to take on the coding assignment and spend a few evenings working on that?
For instance:
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I’m on my third year in the university and have made this web application that runs here (link) with the source code over here (link). I’ve spent the previous summer working at ________ and I’d like to deepen my understanding of _______ and learn how software consultants at Reaktor work with interesting clients like _________ => YES
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I got really interested in coding just a year ago and have completed my first Java course => Not quite yet. Check out our expectations with linked learning tips below. We want you to succeed!
While we value brilliant technical, mathematical and problem-solving skills and knowledge, we also recognize that working at Reaktor is a lot about teamwork. So we gathered together and discussed what are the soft skills and qualities that we are looking for in our teammates and especially junior colleagues, such as Summer Employees. Here’s what we came up with. The list is somewhat prioritized.
- Has the humility and courage to ask for help when needed, and also the perseverance for trying and learning independently when that’s called for. Hopefully also the judgment for drawing the line between the two.
- Social skills for interaction with teammates, clients and others. Friendliness, good manners, discussion, even some small talk. Good listener. Adapts own status to situation. Not everyone needs to be a talkative extrovert though, we are all different!
- Self-reflection: aware of own capabilities and the lack thereof
- Verbal and written communications are key in collaborative teamwork, working together with people with different views and backgrounds. Discussing technical matters with non-technical people. The courage to speak and the ability to express and argue for one’s own views, even when disagrees with others.
- Cares about and is emphatic toward others
- Reliable, takes responsibility
- Enjoys challenges and takes the occasional tough task on the whiteboard
- Can and wants to work in a team or a pair. Not a solo cowboy coder.
- Wants to join us for the right reasons, to be able to learn and grow
- Mastering the Finnish language. Not an absolute requirement, but nevertheless highly valuable when working with our clients in Finland.
Similarly we listed, discussed on and even voted on most sought-after technical skills. Here’s our fuzzily prioritized list based on our session. A lot of tips and related learning material can be found in our tips-for-people-who-want-to-learn collective doc.
- Can work with more than one programming language, but most importantly, masters at least one programming language/stack well. tips
- Can adopt new technologies and programming languages quickly and is interested in the development of new languages
- Can write readable, well structured code
- Has experience in using Git and preferably working in a team with good development practices such as code reviews
- Understands and has worked with databases, especially RDBMS such as PostgreSQL
- Masters the Web Stack, including both front-end and backend, as well as related networking protocols. Buzzwords include HTML, CSS, HTTP/S, REST, TCP. tips
- Mastering one of our common tech stacks is a great plus! Could be, for instance Javascript/Typescript+Node+React+SQL for web, or Swift+Kotlin for mobile. While these technologies can be learnt swiftly, the summer is short and mastering at least some commonly-used stacks already gives you a flying start
- Has basic Unix / Linux understanding and experience in using the command line
- Understands the basics of both object-oriented and functional programming paradigms
- Understands computer system performance, in large and small scale. Preferably knows where to optimize and how
- Understands the iterative nature of software development. Doesn’t build gigantic abstractions on the wrong assumptions on the vector of change.
Individual picks include
- Experience and understanding of build systems, automation, continuous integration
- Understanding of deployment environments such as servers, virtual machines, cloud instances, load-balancing, autoscaling, containers, container orchestration, serverless, PaaS
- Understands at least the basics of static typing with related benefits and disadvantages
- Understands data security principles, threats, common types of attacks and security best practices
- Quality and testing understanding and experience
- Debugging skills and experience in small and large
- Data structures, algorithms, complexity knowledge
- Mathematical and algorithmic skills
- “Gets the big picture”
- “Thinks beyond the spec”
- Mobile development
- Experience on the JVM, related ecosystem and languages
- Javascript and Typescript skills and experience
- Low-level concepts that the high-level languages and runtimes are built on
- Eye for UX
- Understanding of relevant subjects outside core competence: design, business, AI etc
What we want to know
- How are your studies: where, what, when
- What you’re looking for in a job and especially in Reaktor
- Your (relevant) work experience
- Your code. Take us to a repository that demonstrates your abilities. Remember to include a good readme. Show professionalism.
- Your language skills
- Your contact info and city of residence
- Possible working permit situation, when not citized on Finland
How we want it
- Clear
- Itemized
- Short
- Comprehensive
We get a lot of applications so please make it easy for us to get the overall picture on your situation. We’ll return the favor by giving you individual feedback and better odds at landing a great job!