Each year recruiters at top tech companies need to fill thousands of engineering roles, but finding talent with the right skill set has become increasingly difficult. Open software developer roles are expected to grow by 22% over the next decade, and backend engineers are in particularly high demand across the industry because of their specialized skill set. The nationwide average base salary for backend developers is $80,000 – 54% more than the median income in the United States. 

Given the amount of potential opportunity for new software engineers, we’re excited to announce that Lambda School will launch a rigorous, 9-month full-time training program for students interested in pursuing backend engineering roles. Backend developers are responsible for designing, building, and maintaining a scalable “behind-the-scenes” infrastructure to support the user interfaces and user experiences built by front end developers. Graduates will be prepared with the technical and professional skills necessary to land an entry-level software developer role at tech companies large and small. 

Inspiration for the new backend program came from Amazon Technical Academy, which trains current, non-technical Amazon employees for software development engineering roles within the company. Amazon Technical Academy’s curriculum is based on the critical knowledge, skills, and attributes required to succeed as a software development engineer at Amazon, which Lambda’s program will cover in their entirety. Amazon Technical Academy is part of Amazon’s commitment to upskill 100,000 of its own employees by 2025. 

Building off of the success of this internal Amazon initiative, Lambda School and Amazon worked together to bring a version of this course that is accessible to the general public so that more people have the skillset for these in-demand technical roles. Unlike many traditional curriculums where students study domains of knowledge separately and sequentially, the Amazon Technical Academy curriculum interleaves knowledge domains throughout the course’s sequence. This resonates with Lambda’s philosophy of education and makes the collaboration a natural fit.

Talent is universally distributed, opportunity is not

Lambda School believes that if you have the right skill set, are passionate about the work, and are eager to succeed, you should be given an equal shot at a more financially secure future.

Lambda School’s well-respected remote curriculum, intensive career prep, and incentive-aligned tuition options, including the Income Share Agreement, are helping to make careers in tech more accessible for people of all backgrounds. ‍In fact, according to our 2020 Diversity Report, 33.7% of our students identify as Underrepresented Minorities, with 12.7% identifying as Black or African American, 11.9% identifying as Hispanic or Latinx, and 25.1% identifying as female.

“According to a study of U.S. workers from Accenture, technical skills are twice as likely to be associated with high-income occupations compared to other skills,” said Ashley Rajagopal, Program Lead, Amazon Technical Academy. “Amazon is committed to upskilling 100,000 of our own employees by 2025 to help them grow their careers. Our new collaboration with Lambda School will help ensure even more people can unlock their full potential and pursue in-demand, high paying technical jobs.”

Lambda School has already proven successful in preparing students to take on entry-level software engineering roles at prestigious tech employers. Outcomes-focused education is at the center of our ethos; every unit and assignment prepares students to succeed in the professional world. Our student outcomes are proof of this: 74% of job-seeking H2 2019 graduates have been hired, and Amazon has hired 28 Lambda graduates to date. Working with Amazon to develop this new backend program is the natural next step for us as we strive to create an accessible path to financial freedom, to increase diversity and opportunity within the tech industry, and to provide the education and support our students need to succeed as software engineers. 

Accessible, outcomes-focused programs to support a variety of career paths

With the addition of this new course, Lambda School will now offer three programs: Data Science, Full Stack Web Development, and Enterprise Backend Development. Our full stack web development course goes deep into the necessary front-end skills like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, and how to interact with APIs and databases, along with teaching the skills to build very basic backends. The new program will be a deep dive into building a scalable and robust backend. Course content will include Java, testing, DynamoDB, concurrency, and more foundational computer science content like data structures and algorithms.

Graduates of the backend program will enjoy all of Lambda School’s standard benefits, which include hands-on product development, leadership opportunities, complimentary mental health resources, and access to our nationwide network of hiring partners. Each graduate will leave Lambda School with over 1,400 hours of hands-on coding experience and have the practical skills required to succeed at a wide variety of companies, without needing a 4-year CS degree.

The new Lambda School Enterprise Backend Development program is slated to launch in Fall 2021. Prospective students who are interested in learning more or applying to the new program are encouraged to sign up for more information.