Developing the Next Generation of Coders with the Dev/Mission <> Uber Coding Fellowship

Uber is dedicated to furthering global citizenship, whether by connecting people to more reliable transportation or giving back to cities through social impact work. 

Since 2017, Uber Engineering has partnered with Dev/Mission, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that trains young adults from underrepresented communities for careers in STEM fields. Dev/Mission holds free programming courses, offers mentorship, and provides resources to help these young adults develop the skills necessary to thrive in tech.

In 2019, Uber’s Open Source Program Office extended this partnership through the launch of the Dev/Mission <> Uber Coding Fellowship, a six-month program that sponsors eight members of the Dev/Mission alumni community as they embark on their technical careers. The participants, who graduated from our pilot program in May 2020, attended weekly courses taught by Uber Engineering team members about how to use the latest open source tools and frameworks such as Git and Node.js. In addition, participants worked with volunteers from Code for San Francisco on a project of their choosing that benefits the local community. 

“As we embark on the third year of our partnership with Dev/Mission, we couldn’t be more excited to work with Uber’s Open Source Program Office on the Dev/Mission <> Uber Coding Fellowship,” said Brian Hsieh, Head of Uber Open Source. “This fellowship marries Uber’s investment in technological excellence with our longstanding commitment to giving back to the cities and communities we serve by educating the next generation of programming talent for careers in STEM.”

During the Dev/Mission <> Uber Coding Fellowship, participants took programming courses while working on a community service project that leverages these new skills. Each course was developed by Uber engineers and focused on teaching participants how to master newer frameworks and other tools to complement their base knowledge of common programming languages such as Go. 

Working with volunteers from Code For San Francisco, participants met once a week at Civic Hack Night to learn how to identify community needs and facilitate a research process to design a technological solution for those needs.

“Dev/Mission is dedicated to providing the opportunity and resources necessary for our Bay Area-based participants to succeed in technical professions,” said Leonardo Sosa, CEO and Co-Founder of Dev/Mission. “We are very grateful for Uber’s continued support of our programs and look forward to continuing our partnership through the Dev/Mission <> Uber Coding Fellowship.” 

Dev/Mission and Uber have a long standing partnership. In fact, Dev/Mission hosted its very first meetings in Uber’s San Francisco office. Since those early days, Uber has hosted corporate site visits, donated over 100 laptops and 200 monitors, and committed to a $300,000 grant to Dev/Mission over the course of 3 years.

This partnership also speaks to Uber Open Source’s charter of contributing to open source development through collaboration, community and project sustainability, and initiatives that promote diversity and inclusion. Our hope is that this partnership represents just the beginning and we can continue to work with our participants through other Uber programs like Uber Career Prep and technical internships with the company.  

On behalf of Uber, we’d like to congratulate Gael Gil, Daniel Guardado, Raymond Huang, Carmen Isabella Flores, Christian Mejia, Christina Salas, and Leroy Valle-Bermudez, members of our first Dev/Mission <> Uber Fellowship graduating class! 

Uber couldn’t be more excited to partner with Dev/Mission to further our commitment to training the next generation of software engineers in San Francisco and give back to the local community through their engagement with Code for San Francisco. 

We’re excited to welcome our second Dev/Mission <> Uber Coding Fellowship participants in fall 2020! 

Learn more about how Uber gives back to the communities we serve.