Software Engineer Instructor

Since 2011, General Assembly has transformed tens of thousands of careers through pioneering, experiential education in today’s most in-demand skills. As featured in The Economist, Wired, and The New York Times, GA offers training in web development, data, design, business, and more, both online and at campuses around the world. Our global professional community boasts 40,000 alumni — and counting.

In addition to fostering career growth for individuals, GA helps employers cultivate top tech talent and spur innovation by transforming their teams through strategic learning. More than 21,000 employees at elite companies worldwide have honed their digital fluency with our corporate training programs. GA has also been recognized as one of Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500, and Fast Company has dubbed us leaders in World-Changing Ideas as well as the #1 Most Innovative Company in Education.

We are looking for instructors

Our Software Engineering Immersive course is a life-changing educational experience where our students learn the skills and mindsets to take on new careers as web developers. We are looking for a lead instructor with strong full-stack web development experience to play a key role in teaching and leading the instructional team. 

Why teach our Software Engineering Immersive?

If you are looking to make a life-changing impact by sharing your love for software development with the next generation of developers, we’d love for you to consider joining our team. This is also an opportunity to support General Assembly's programs in our newest region in the Middle East, Bahrain! We deliver more than just skills training, and are looking for teachers who share our vision for a community of lifelong learners pursuing work that they love. As an Instructor Lead for our flagship full-time web development program, you will join us to:

• Work closely with one or more co-instructors to guide students through a rigorous, transformational journey towards apprenticeship in software development.
• Become a better leader, and mentor as you learn from veteran instructors and our world-class instructional coaches.
• Inspire and support students as they identify their passions and drive their own continued learning beyond the curriculum.
• Adapt our global curriculum and use it to guide your teaching, building your own lesson plans as needed and contributing back your lessons learned over time.
• Facilitate a safe, supportive, and energetic community that welcomes the various needs and learning styles of your students.

What do we teach?

We adapt both our global curriculum and local approach to the technical trends and hiring environment of the times and cities we work in, but today our primary educational approach centers around JavaScript. In general, our curriculum is scaffolded to follow the historical evolution of web development. We start by teaching the fundamentals of programming and web design through JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. About 25% of our course (normally unit 2 of 4) focuses on Rails MVC or Django or similar frameworks, using that context to introduce databases, security, and other foundational knowledge. The rest of the course (units 3 and 4) focuses back on JavaScript. We cover API development in Node, then tackle one or more front-end MV* frameworks (Backbone, Angular, Ember, React). We also cover all sorts of other things that junior web developers need to know, like source control, team collaboration, and developer workflow.

We give students the chance to spend focused time building at least 4 major projects, in addition to other smaller projects and labs. About 20% of overall class time is spent on dedicated project work.

Skills and Qualifications:

• You are the person that your colleagues naturally gravitate to when they are trying to figure something out.
• You are eager to shape the skills, minds, and careers of the newest generation of web developers.
• You have at least 3 years of experience working on a software development team.
• WDI/SEI Alumni a strong plus.
• You have working experience in both front-end and back-end development, and are fluent in:
• HTML and CSS
• Full-stack JavaScript (strong JavaScript highly preferred)
• At least one JS MV* framework (Angular, Backbone, or React preferred)
• SQL databases (we generally use PostgreSQL)
• NoSQL (we generally cover MongoDB and Redis)
• At least one additional object-oriented language (Ruby or Python preferred)

Responsibilities and Duties

• Teach Sunday-Thursday, 9am-5pm (local time), for the 12 week duration of the program.
• Instructors will need to commit a few hours per week supporting students, preparing lessons and materials, leveraging existing GA curriculum content.
• Work closely with co-instructors or teaching assistants to provide students with meaningful and prompt feedback on their progress.
• Work alongside GA staff and teaching team to best meet the needs and learning styles of your students.
• Guide students through development of a stellar final project that will showcase their abilities to hiring managers.
• Facilitate a dynamic, collaborative, and positive classroom community.
• Inspire students to persevere through the challenges of learning a new skill set.

General Assembly will cover all travel-related expenses for qualified candidates.