Apply to join the Core Collaborators Team

The Core Collaborators Community Team

One of Umbraco’s greatest strengths is that we have a healthy ecosystem of people who contribute to the CMS in hundreds of different ways. One of the most impactful ways to contribute is to send a pull request. Our aim for 2023 is to make contributing easier and to grow the number of active code contributors to Umbraco CMS.

Our team’s mission is:

We empower you to influence how your favorite CMS evolves by guiding your contribution, ensuring the process is clear, simple and enjoyable.

What that means in practice is that we are:

• Evaluating incoming pull requests to Umbraco CMS and the Umbraco UI library
• Coordinating with the Umbraco HQ development team
• Running the Umbraco Hacktoberfest event during the whole of October
• Identifying potential contributors and giving them that last nudge needed to get their first pull request in
• Celebrating successful contributors (first-timers, “often-timers”, special contributions, etc.)
• Removing obstacles for new and existing contributors
• Helping with the administrative work by appropriately labeling pull requests and issues

We don’t expect anyone to do all of the above, but these are the main topics that this team will cover.

What do we expect from you?

First of all to be an Umbraco community member we expect you to abide by our code of conduct.

We are aware that your time is valuable and limited, but we believe that we will all get the most out of your tenure if you can spend, on average, at least 2 dedicated hours a week working for the team. 

Your tenure will be one year, after which we open up for applications again, and you’re of course welcome to reapply.

You’ll be working with contributors from all walks of life, with many different levels of experience. That means that your most important quality as a team member is being able to be flexible and empathetic towards our contributors. 

As for technical abilities, we only have some soft requirements: we expect you to know a bit about Git and we expect you to have built a few Umbraco sites for clients. Additionally, if you have an affinity with UX design and/or accessibility that’s a plus. The rest we will teach!

We hold a team meeting at least once a month. If it’s relevant, we can coordinate additional meetings. While your participation is required, we also don’t want to waste your time; if there’s nothing to discuss then we’ll skip the team meeting. You’re always welcome to request a one-on-one meeting as well.

What kind of folks are we looking for?

Look, we’ve been doing this for a while, and there is plenty of imposter syndrome floating around in this industry. We have deliberately kept the requirements above very minimal to make it clear that this is an opportunity for anyone who’s done some work with Umbraco.

We pride ourselves on adding people to the team with various backgrounds, including people who have little experience in the specific tasks at hand, and helping them to grow and flourish.

Some examples that could serve as inspiration:

• Poornima Nayar started on the Core Collaborators team as someone who was very new to the Umbraco community and pull requests; at her first Codegarden visit she asked if she could join the Core Collabs team and not only did she start contributing regularly to open-source, 4 years later she is a 4x MVP at Umbraco and a 2x MVP at Microsoft
• Emma Burstow had been working with Umbraco for about a year and as a programmer for 2 years when she joined the Core Collaborators team; 4 years later she is not only a 2x Microsoft MVP but has also joined Umbraco HQ, in fact as my boss, in the role of director of developer relations

While their team membership wasn’t directly responsible for those achievements, it does go to show that even starting something new and scary from scratch can put you on an interesting path in life.

What’s in it for you?

Hopefully you’re already intrinsically motivated to help out because you’re passionate about working with various fantastic community members who are looking to make Umbraco better together. 

But perks are nice, so here are some perks you can look forward to:

• You’ll be in a lovely team with 5 other people who will work with and support you
• You’re directly influencing how your favorite CMS works by merging pull requests, ooh la la!
• You will have deep insight into the upcoming releases of Umbraco CMS and can pride yourself in having helped make each release better
• You’ll receive relevant Umbraco courses as needed for the job
• You’ll have direct access to our development team to discuss ideas and get help with questions
• You’ll be working with various fantastic community members who are looking to make Umbraco better together
• Once a year you’ll be invited to join us in Odense on a 2-day retreat specifically for all of our community team members (travel/lodging/food covered by Umbraco HQ)

Convince your boss!

While we would love it if you want to become a part of the team in your spare time, we also want to be respectful and sensitive to your work-life balance. 

In our opinion, the ideal situation would be for your employer to sponsor your team membership by setting aside those hours for you to dedicate to your work on the Core Collabs team.

If your employer is already a Gold Partner then they automatically qualify for Contributing Gold Partner status if they set aside 2 hours per week for participation in the Core Collabs team.

Additionally, your participation in the Core Collaborators team benefits them directly because you:

• Learn all about the ins and outs of the Umbraco source code; each pull request touches a different part of the system, leading to a greater depth of knowledge in Umbraco and how all of the parts work together
• Depending on your current training level and additional training we offer, they might qualify for certified partnership
• As you’re building your network of contributors, this leads to you having important connections to people in the community to talk to about opportunities in the Umbraco ecosystem
• Having direct access to the Umbraco HQ development team is a bonus (that we encourage you not to abuse.. 😉)
• Bragging rights; your employer is very welcome to boast about them sponsoring a part that great work in growing the contributor community and making new Umbraco CMS releases better

How do you apply?

To apply to be a member of the Core Collaborators Community Team, please fill in the application form so we can get to know you better. After filling in the form we’ll contact you to make an appointment for a short interview (max. 30 minutes).

Apply for the Core Collaborators team

Do you know someone who should apply?

If you know someone who might be interested or is the perfect candidate then why not let them know! Send them a link to this post and encourage them to apply. 

And I mean: really encourage them, don’t just send a link. Say something like: “I think you should apply for this team because I know that you are passionate about 'x' and really good at 'y' and they would be lucky to have you”. (hi! 👋 if you got sent here with wording like that then: please apply, we’d be very lucky to have you!).