Join the Core Collaborators
Applications are open until Friday 27 November
Applications are open
The Core Collaborators team is open for new applications. The last round was back in January 2023, and a lot has changed since then, both in how people contribute to Umbraco and in what this team needs to focus on.
There's also a change in who leads the team. I've been its steward since 2018, and with this round I'm handing over the reins to my colleague Nikolaj Lauridsen from the CMS team at HQ.
Why now
Community contributions to Umbraco CMS have grown considerably over the past year. Community pull requests are up roughly 2.5 times compared to the same period last year (January through September). We’re very happy to see that a noticeable share of them come from first-time contributors.
Many of these contributions are AI-assisted, and most of them are bug fixes. That's a welcome development, but it changes the work. Reviewing a high volume of AI-assisted pull requests calls for a different focus than guiding a handful of hand-crafted ones, and the next team will help shape how we do that.
A new mission is also a good moment for a new steward.
Your new team steward
Your new team steward is Umbraco HQ's Nikolaj Lauridsen. Nikolaj works on the CMS team, so he's right where the pull requests land. From now on he'll run the team meetings and keep an eye on how community contributions are doing.
What the team does
The mission stays the same: we empower you to influence how your favourite CMS evolves by guiding your contribution, ensuring the process is clear, simple and enjoyable.
In practice, the team focuses on:
Reviewing community pull requests to Umbraco CMS. The most valuable review is a hands-on one: check out the branch, confirm it runs and does what it claims, and assess whether the code is readable and fixes the actual problem rather than hiding it.
Holding contributions to a clear standard. The author of a pull request is responsible for it, regardless of how the code was produced.
Supporting HQ pull requests. Now that pull requests are easier than ever to open, HQ's own review queue grows too. Selected HQ pull requests might carry the community review label for the team to pick up.
Welcoming new contributors, helping them land their first pull request and encouraging them to come back for a second.
Supporting community events such as Umbraco Builders Day.
The team's scope is the core CMS repository. Documentation, the Umbraco AI repositories, etc. are outside the current mission.
What we expect from you
We ask for, on average, around 2 dedicated hours per week. The team meets roughly once a month to discuss progress and ideas for improvement.
The technical requirements are pretty modest: you're comfortable with Git and you've built a few Umbraco sites. With so many AI-assisted contributions coming in, the ability to read code matters more than ever. We'll help you with the rest.
This is an opportunity for anyone who's done some work with Umbraco. We've always welcomed people with different backgrounds and levels of experience. Georgina Bidder, for example, attended her first Umbraco community event in 2023, was encouraged to apply, and has since become an unmissable part of our community.
What's in it for you
An early view of what's coming. You'll see upcoming bug fixes and features before they ship, and help make each release better.
Real influence on the CMS you work with every day, by reviewing and approving the changes that go into it.
Direct access to the HQ development team for questions, ideas and feedback.
Training in the form of relevant Umbraco courses, as needed for the role.
Recognition on the Core Collaborators team page and a team badge on the Umbraco forum.
A platform to share your work, for example at community events like Umbraco Builders Day.
A virtual meet with all the community teams in January, connecting you with the other teams and with HQ.
A network across the community, working alongside experienced contributors and meeting new ones every week.
We encourage you to spend your working hours on this, so it's worth raising with your employer. Your membership gives them someone with early insight into upcoming bug fixes and features, a growing network across the Umbraco community, and a visible contribution to the platform they build on. If that isn't possible, taking part in your spare time is absolutely fine too.
How to apply
Fill in the application form below to tell us a bit about yourself. We'll follow up to schedule a short interview of no more than 30 minutes.
Applications are open from now until Friday 27 November. Current team members are very welcome to reapply.
Shortly after applications close, we'll bring the new team together for a kick-off.
Know someone who should apply?
Please pass this post on, with a personal note. Tell them why you think they'd be a good fit: what they're passionate about and what they're good at. A personal nudge often makes the difference.
(And if you've arrived here because someone did exactly that: please apply, we'd be lucky to have you.)
Join us
Community contributions to Umbraco are going up, and this team makes sure each one gets a fair, timely and friendly review. If you’d like to be part of that, fill in the form below. We’d love to hear from you.
