Engineering & Technology
Software Engineering Challenges
Real software-engineering projects on Ewance — design, build, and ship features against production-shaped constraints, not toy exercises. Solve them to build a portfolio of verified, recruiter-checkable proof you can do the work — not just describe it.
Recommended challenges
- CodeIntermediateNew
Build an Indexer for an On-Chain DeFi Analytics Product
Receive the 6 protocols' ABIs + the team's required event coverage spec (around 40 event types). Build a TypeScript indexer using viem + Postgres: subscribe to new blocks via We…
- Blockchain Indexing
- Typescript
- Ethereum
Blockchain and Decentralized Systems Engineering - CodeIntermediateNew
Add Idempotency Keys to a Payment Webhook System
Read the current Go webhook-sender code and 30 days of duplicate-delivery incident logs. Design the idempotency scheme: server-generated key per event (UUID v7 — time-ordered), …
- REST API Design
- Idempotency
- Webhooks
API Design and GraphQL - PresentationIntermediateNew
Run a Cross-Team Retrospective After a Failed Launch
Design a 3-hour structured retrospective using either Liberating Structures or Norm Kerr's 'Prime Directive' framing (assume people did the best job possible with what they knew…
- Retrospectives
- Facilitation
- Incident Analysis
Agile Methods and Practices - StrategyIntermediateNew
Decompose a CRM Monolith into Bounded Services
Analyze the monolith using NDepend or similar (provided). Identify the top 4-6 candidate service boundaries based on coupling + business-capability seams (likely: Quotation, Pol…
- Strangler Fig Pattern
- Service Decomposition
- Csharp Programming
Enterprise and Business Software Engineering Practice your coursework on real scenarios.
Every challenge is shaped from real-world context — not generic exercises. The work mirrors what your degree prepares you for.
Why Ewance
- DesignIntermediateNew
Design a Versioning Strategy for a Public REST API
Receive the OpenAPI spec for the 14 endpoints, 8 months of partner-support tickets tagged 'breaking-change', and the partner-mix breakdown (which endpoints which partner uses). …
- REST API Design
- REST API Design
- API Versioning
API Design and GraphQL - ResearchIntermediateNew
Industrial Case Study: Why a Microservices Migration Failed
Conduct 8 1-hour interviews across CTO, 3 tech leads, 2 platform engineers, 1 SRE, and the product VP. Analyze 24 months of artifacts (ADRs, RFCs, incident reports, deployment d…
- Industrial Case Study
- Qualitative Research
- Software Architecture
Advanced Software Engineering - DesignBeginnerNew
Architecture Documentation Refresh for a 10-Year-Old Platform
Audit existing docs: tag each page as keep / kill / refresh. Apply the C4 model (Context, Container, Component, Code) — produce 1 Context diagram, 4 Container diagrams (per majo…
- Architecture Documentation
- C4 Model
- Arc42
Software Architecture - AnalysisIntermediateNew
Technical-Debt Quantification for an Acquired SaaS
Run a static-analysis sweep (SonarQube + custom dependency scripts) and a 4-hour structured walkthrough with the acquired team's 3 senior engineers. Categorize debt into: code-q…
- Technical Debt
- Code Analysis
- Estimation
Software Evolution and Maintenance - Browse challenges
Explore role
Product Manager
Ship product that solves real user problems. Combine user research, prototyping, and stakeholder alignment to turn ambiguous briefs into measurable wins — the role at the centre of modern software teams.
- AnalysisBeginnerNew
Developer-Experience Audit of a Public API
Walk through the existing public API as a first-time developer using only the public docs, OpenAPI spec, SDKs (Python + JavaScript), and example repos. Run the first-hour test 3…
- Developer Experience
- REST API Design
- Audit Grade Documentation
API Design and GraphQL - DesignIntermediateNew
Build a Quality Metrics Program for a Medical-Device Software Team
Read the team's QMS (Quality Management System) documents and the IEC 62304 software lifecycle requirements. Design a metric catalog of 12-15 metrics covering process (review-co…
- Quality Metrics
- Iec 62304
- Process Improvement
Software Quality and Process Improvement - StrategyIntermediateNew
Recover a Red-RAG Enterprise Implementation Mid-Flight
Pull 7 months of project artifacts (Jira, status reports, change requests, meeting minutes, time-tracking). Interview 6 people across the delivery team + 3 from the client side.…
- Project Recovery
- Estimation
- Scope Management
Software Project Management - StrategyBeginnerNew
IDE-Assisted Refactoring Bootcamp for a Junior Backend Team
Design a 5-day curriculum centered on 10 katas chosen for refactoring-pattern coverage (e.g., Gilded Rose for replace-conditional-with-polymorphism, Tennis kata for extract-meth…
- Refactoring
- Katas
- Ide Tooling
Refactoring and Code Smell Detection Build a verifiable portfolio.
Submissions become evidence. Reviewers with shipping experience score against a rubric; the result becomes a credential anyone can verify.
Why Ewance
- CodeIntermediateNew
Build an Event-Sourced Inventory System for a Warehouse
Design the event model: 12-15 events covering the warehouse lifecycle. Implement using EventStoreDB (or Kafka + a snapshotting projection layer) in Go or C#. Build at least 3 re…
- Event Sourcing
- Cqrs
- Eventstoredb
Event-Driven Architecture - DesignIntermediateNew
Domain-Driven Design Aggregate Redesign for a Lending API
Facilitate a 1-day event-storming workshop with 8 participants from product, engineering, risk, and operations to surface domain events. From the events, identify 3-5 bounded co…
- Domain Driven Design
- Event Storming
- Bounded Contexts
Software Design and Design Patterns - CodeIntermediateNew
Specification-First Refactor of a Payments Module
Read the module, the last 12 months of incidents touching it, and the existing tests. Write a 6-page specification using a precondition / postcondition / invariant format per pu…
- Specifications
- Refactoring
- Characterization Testing
Software Construction - AnalysisIntermediateNew
Build a Technical Debt Register for a Legacy Banking Monolith
Run 8 structured 45-minute engineer interviews (template provided) capturing one debt item per pain point with reproducible evidence. Run SonarQube against the monolith for a qu…
- Technical Debt
- Debt Quadrant
- Code Quality
Technical Debt Management - CodeIntermediateNew
Upstream a Strategic Patch to a Major CNCF Project
Pick a published roadmap area on the chosen project (instructor will sanity-check the choice). Read the project's CONTRIBUTING.md, RFC template, governance model, and the 3 most…
- Oss Contribution
- Rfc Design
- Pr Etiquette
Open Source Contribution and Maintainership - CodeIntermediateNew
Refactor a Big-Ball-of-Mud Java Servlet Application
Week 1: install JUnit 5 + Testcontainers harness, write characterization tests for the 2 target workflows (PolicyIssue + ClaimSubmit) reaching at least 80 percent branch coverag…
- Refactoring
- Characterization Testing
- Legacy Systems
Software Evolution and Maintenance - CodeIntermediateNew
Software Analytics Dashboard for an Engineering Org
Author a metric catalog defining each of ~15 metrics with formula, data source, refresh cadence, and known caveats (e.g. lead-time-for-changes excludes WIP-flagged PRs to avoid …
- Software Analytics
- Dora Metrics
- Space Framework
Advanced Software Engineering - CodeIntermediateNew
Debug a Race Condition in a Real-Time Collaboration Service
Build a deterministic load-test harness (k6 or Playwright) that reproduces the corruption within 3 attempts on a clean local stack. Capture traces with OpenTelemetry to localize…
- Debugging
- Concurrency
- Load Testing
Software Construction - AnalysisIntermediateNew
Reverse-Engineer a 22-Year-Old COBOL Batch Pipeline
Use SonarQube + cobol-language tooling + JCL parsers to extract job dependencies and data-flow across the 140 jobs. Build a job-dependency graph (Graphviz). Run impact analysis:…
- Reverse Engineering
- Legacy Systems
- Dependency Analysis
Software Evolution and Maintenance - StrategyBeginnerNew
Estimate and Schedule a 16-Week Custom CRM for an Agency Client
Read the 22-page SOW (statement of work). Decompose into a 3-level work-breakdown structure (~80-110 leaf tasks). Estimate each leaf using 3-point (optimistic/most-likely/pessim…
- Estimation
- Scheduling
- Work Breakdown Structure
Software Project Management - AnalysisBeginnerNew
Rescue a Stalling Scrum Team at a Series-B HealthTech
Review 8 hours of recorded ceremonies and 3 sprints of Jira data (story sizing, carry-over rate, cycle time per story, blocker tags). Diagnose the top 3 root causes (likely cand…
- Agile / Scrum Ceremonies
- Agile Metrics
- Retrospectives
Agile Methods and Practices - CodeBeginnerNew
Add a Test Harness to an Untested Open-Source CLI
Fork the repo (test mirror provided), set up Vitest with coverage and a CI workflow that fails under 75 percent on the targeted modules. Write characterization tests first (asse…
- Unit Testing
- Integration Testing
- Test Coverage
Software Construction
How it works
From brief to credential, in six steps.
Step 01
Browse challenges aligned to your studies.
Step 02
Accept the one that fits your goals.
Step 03
Work through it with AI Copilot guidance.
Step 04
Submit for structured evaluation.
Step 05
Earn a verified credential.
Step 06
Add it to LinkedIn with one click.
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