Andela seeks to enhance remote work through EPIC hackathon

By Rosemary Iwuala

Andela, the global marketplace for remote technical talent, has opened applications for its upcoming EPIC tournament. In partnership with HackerEarth, the tournament will see elite developers working in teams to prototype solutions that will positively impact the growing global remote workforce.

Participants can be located anywhere in the world but must choose a country to represent within the four different regions of America, Europe, Middle East Africa, or Asia-Pacific, Andela said in a statement.

In line with Andela’s focus on helping companies build remote engineering teams, coders will be hacking and designing products that will help solve the problems of the future of work.

Consisting of two rounds, teams or individuals will first participate in the EPIC Coding Challenge, where they will be assessed on their coding abilities. The three-hour challenge will see participants code their way up to the leaderboard.

Andela said a shortlist of 16 teams (four from each region) will get exclusive access to the EPIC Remote Worker Hackathon starting November 28, 2022, where they will spend 10 days working on their hack ahead of presenting their solution to a panel of judges.

Participants’ final work will be judged based on their problem-solving and product-building skills, as well as Andela’s EPIC values. They are encouraged to be excellent in their various stacks, passionate about their idea/solution, show Integrity and honesty when showcasing the solutions they will be providing, and collaborate to win against the other teams in the competition.

Te teams with the top three strongest solutions in terms of creativity, impact, feasibility, and scalability will be awarded prizes worth $10,000 in cash and swags from Andela and partners.

“Through the EPIC tournament, we are creating an experience that will help developers across the world to test their skills and collaborate with others while potentially developing meaningful solutions to positively impact the growing number of remote workers around the world,” said Michael Starkenburg, Andela’s chief product and technology officer.

“Hackathons encourage participants to tap into their creativity, and we look forward to the creative solutions technologists will come up with,” he said.

In recent years, the mainstream adoption of remote work has seen exponential growth, with 56 percent of global companies allowing remote work, while 16 percent of global companies are fully remote, according to an Owl Labs study. The hackathon will inspire solutions that can power the future of remote work globally.

“Talent exists all over the globe. Technology is creating more diverse and inclusive opportunities today than ever before – it doesn’t matter where you were born, where you live, your age, or your gender,” Carlos Carrascal, senior marketing manager for talent at Andela, said.

“At Andela, we created the EPIC tournament as a space for engineers to showcase their skills, represent their country, have fun, and be part of the best team in their region – and the world,” Carrascal said.

Launched in 2014, Andela helps companies such as GitHub, Goldman Sachs, and Cloudflare build remote engineering teams by providing them with access to the world’s best software engineers. Today, the Andela network represents engineering talent from over 100 countries.

Applications for the hackathon will close on November 26, 2022, with the shortlisted teams evaluated at the live-streamed finale and award ceremony on December 13, 2022, Andela said.