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Hack the Planet Scholarship

Scholarship recipient will be announced: Sept 1

Now in its third year, our Hack the Planet Scholarship is for black, latinx and other underrepresented groups in technology who want to work on distributed systems. The program supports people hacking on a distributed systems-related project over a four-month period.

The most valuable part of our scholarship is the support we provide. Scholarship recipients receive $1,500/month, weekly 1-1 mentorship from our most senior staff engineers (some of us have worked on the largest systems in the world), a monthly 1-1 with our CEO, code review and design review to hack on any project you want – preferably open source projects.

From a Recent Scholarship Recipient

“The Hack the Planet Scholarship enabled me to spend four months learning about distributed systems. During mentoring sessions it was very useful to be able to get the perspective of Redpanda’s distributed systems engineers.

This scholarship helped me to advance my goal of building an AI startup by enabling me to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to design and implement complex systems as well as to evaluate existing tools and use them effectively.”

— Anush, First Scholarship Recipient

Process

Scholarship requirements:

You must know basic programming in C++, Go, C, JavaScript or Java (the programming languages our team is highly skilled in).

Write a proposal for a project that you want to hack on for 3-4 months and fill out an application here: https://forms.gle/owUPGdpDGP1rNcS39

We want to know:

  1. Why you? Tell us your story (Github profile encouraged)
  2. How/where can we help you the most?
  3. Project
  4. Summary
  5. Why do you want to hack on this project?

The project must involve 2 or more computers trying to achieve a task (save data, replicate files, etc.). It should be challenging for you and should scope 3-4 months of work. Most importantly, we want you to have fun on the project, knowing you have an amazing network of mentors to help when you get stuck!

After you apply

Applications will be reviewed beginning July 31st. Each application will be shared with all of the companies participating in this scholarship program. Final decisions will be communicated to the recipients by August 22, 2023. Each recipient will be assigned a scholarship/mentorship with one of the companies based on their project proposal. If you have a preference for which company you want to work with, please indicate in your application.