Overview
What this challenge is about.
Audit a dev tools team across 4 timezones, design 5 squads, build a comms playbook and on-call rotation, and deliver an org design with a verifiable certificate.
The scenario
The platform company (Series-C at USD 70M raised) hit growing pains: the 12-person SF team made every decision in person, and that pattern broke the moment the org went distributed.
The Brief
What you'll do, and what you'll demonstrate.
Design org structure, communication cadence, on-call, and decision-making for a 43-person distributed engineering org across 4 timezones.
Earning criteria — what you'll demonstrate
- Design squad ownership that avoids cross-timezone handoffs
- Build a communication playbook that scales beyond founders
- Design an on-call rotation that respects timezone humanity
- Build a decision-making RACI for distributed architecture decisions
Program Fit
Where this fits in your program.
Sharpens the same skills your degree expects you to demonstrate.
Aligned coursework coming soon.
Skills
Skills you'll demonstrate.
Each one shows up on your verified credential.
- Team Management
Apply team management to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Distributed Teams
Apply distributed teams to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Communication Design
Apply communication design to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- On Call Design
Apply on call design to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Decision Frameworks
Apply decision frameworks to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Onboarding
Apply onboarding to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
Careers
Career paths this challenge builds toward
Completing this challenge demonstrates skills that transfer directly to these roles:
Product Manager
Product managers fluent in async + sync decision tiers ship roadmaps that survive distributed-team scale.
This challenge sharpens
- decision-frameworks
- communication-design
- onboarding