The LF Networking Mentorship (formerly Internship) program, which began as an internship program with OpenDaylight several years ago and has evolved into a cross-project initiative, has become an invaluable on-ramp for college and graduate students looking to gain real world experience and skills in open source networking development, work closely with technical experts to grow their professional network, and enhance their resumes with tangible project contributions.
This week, LF Networking kicked off the 2020 LFN Mentorship Program with 9 active projects now seeking mentees (note: The deadline to apply is April 24!) Project opportunities include building a portal for ONAP Automation Testing; Hardware Delivery Verification Tool; ONAP Security Requirements; Conformance Testing for ETSI NFV APIs; and more. A full list of available projects can be found here: https://wiki.lfnetworking.org/display/LN/2020+Mentorship+Projects.
Each project is an opportunity for a student (mentee) to be paired with one or more active members of the LFN developer community (mentors) to take on specific LFN development challenges. These paid mentorship opportunities are open to students anywhere in the world and offer the chance to be active participants in developing cutting-edge open source networking technologies.
The mentorship is a hands-on, results-oriented program that starts with active developers designing and proposing mentorship projects that have real impact on advancing LF Networking ecosystem technologies. These projects must first be approved by the corresponding LFN project (e.g., OPNFV, ONAP, FD.io, OpenDaylight) Technical Steering Committee before becoming official mentorship opportunities. Moreover, the program creates a structured hands-on learning opportunity for new developers who may otherwise lack the opportunity to gain exposure to open source software development and entry to the LFN projects’ technical communities. It also provides a more defined path for LFN projects to connect with the next generation of student developers to inject more talent into their developer base.
The developers who propose the projects serve as the mentors and work closely with their mentees on developing a project plan, setting milestones and solving problems. Students can expect regular evaluations and feedback as well as a stipend and the chance to travel (with expenses covered, pending current global situation) to a technical event where they will present their work to the community.
For more about the program, available opportunities, and details on the application process, go here.
Check out these Q&As with past LFN mentees:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I-uiLClD_w[/embedyt]
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50AIogbRVvQ[/embedyt]
Hurry! The deadline to apply is April 24.
