What was the problem?

The Android onboarding process lacked structure and rigor, leaving new engineers uncertain about what they needed to learn and with no objective way to validate their understanding before joining active development work.

What did I do?

I redesigned the Android onboarding project to comprehensively cover essential engineering skills and made it self-evaluating through unit tests, allowing new engineers to learn by writing code while immediately receiving feedback on their progress.

How did I do it?

  1. I mapped out the core technical skills and practices every Android engineer needed to master before joining the team. These were especially targeted at knowing how to use the internal framework.
  2. I structured the onboarding project as a progressive series of coding exercises where new engineers filled in implementation details.
  3. I added unit tests that validated each completed exercise, providing immediate feedback without requiring manual review.
  4. I carefully designed tests to fail only after each corresponding exercise was tackled, creating a clear learning path and preventing new engineers from skipping steps.

What did I achieve?

I managed to create a scalable, self-contained onboarding experience that objectively validated new Android engineers’ readiness while removing the buddy’s need to review their work. New hires gained confidence through immediate feedback, and the team could trust that onboarded engineers had demonstrated competency across essential skills.