Call for Track Maintainers

We're looking for new Track Maintainers. Interested? Read on!

Exercism is powered by the energy of many volunteers, especially the track maintainers who are responsible for creating and managing our Language Tracks.

We're about to start a big push towards version 3 (v3) of Exercism. Getting all the tracks ready for v3 is going to be a big community effort, and we're looking to add more maintainers to oversee and manage that task.

In the push to v3, our maintainers will be responsible for:

• Designing the track: Working out what someone needs to learn to become fluent in a language, and mapping this out as a pathway.
• Decision making: Making design decisions around the tooling the track uses, the standards it conforms to, the defaults it uses, etc.
• Encouraging and supporting contributions: Providing a welcoming environment for people that want to help out, answering their questions, etc.
• Reviewing PRs: A lot of the actual work of building out v3 tracks will be done by the community. Maintainers act as gatekeepers, reviewing the work that the community does and ensuring the track's standards are enforced.

This might all sound a bit daunting but with the work spread between a team of maintainers, individuals can do the bits that they feel best equipped for. Our more experienced maintainers will also help you get started and hold your hand as you learn the ropes.

To be able to do the role you will:

• Be able to commit an average of 3 hours per week (preferably spread over the week) for about 6 months. We know that life ebbs and flows though so fully understand that some weeks might work better than others for you to contribute.
• Have used Exercism.
• Preferably have contributed to Exercism - either as a mentor or having contributed to the codebase. While this isn't an absolute requirement, we find our maintainers enjoy the process more if they have some existing experience with Exercism.

Maintainers are volunteers so don't get paid. The key motivation will ideally be you wanting to help people develop their programming skills, and help a non-for-profit organisation. Being an Exercism maintainer is also a great opportunity to work with some other smart people, learn more about your language of choice, and gain skills and experience that are useful for growing your career in the technical leadership direction. It also looks pretty good on a resume.

If you're interested in becoming a maintainer, we'd love to hear from you. There is an issue on GitHub for each live track, where you can post a comment introducing yourself. You can find a list of the issues here.