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Engineering onboarding guide

A free engineering onboarding guide template: accounts, local setup, architecture tour, first tasks, how work flows, on-call and who to ask, with a day-by-day plan for the first two weeks.

Best for
Startups and engineering teams hiring their next five to fifty engineers
Length
One page plus links
Sections
9

A good onboarding guide gets a new engineer to their first merged change in days, not weeks, and answers the questions they feel awkward asking twice.

Keep this page short and link out to the details. It is a map, not an encyclopedia. The example below is from a fictional company, Ferncast.

Tip. Ask every new hire to fix one thing in this guide during their first week. It is the only reliable way to keep it current.

  1. 01

    Welcome and how to use this guide

    Two sentences on what the team builds and who the guide is for. Name an onboarding buddy and say that questions are expected.

  2. 02

    Accounts and access, day one

    A checklist of every system they need, who grants it and how to request it. Group by urgency so nothing blocks the first afternoon.

    • Email, chat and calendar
    • Code hosting org and the main repositories
    • Cloud console with read-only access to start
    • Password manager vault for the team
    • Docs workspace and issue tracker

  3. 03

    Local development setup

    Exact steps to run the main product locally, with tool versions. Prefer one script over a long list of manual steps, and say how long it should take.

    bash
    brew bundle            # installs tools from the Brewfile
mise install           # pins Node, Python and Go versions
./scripts/bootstrap    # seeds a local database, about 6 minutes
make dev               # app on http://localhost:3000

  4. 04

    Architecture tour

    A one-page overview of the main services, how they talk to each other and where data lives. Link to the ADRs that explain the big decisions so the history is there when they need it.

  5. 05

    How work flows

    From ticket to production: how work is planned, branch and review conventions, how CI and deploys work and what done means. Include the commands for a deploy if engineers run them.

    • Where tickets live and how they are sized
    • Branch naming and pull request template
    • Review expectations, such as one approval within one working day
    • How to deploy and how to roll back

  6. 06

    First tasks

    Two or three small, real tasks chosen in advance: a documentation fix, a small bug and a feature flag change. The goal is a full trip through review and deploy in the first week.

  7. 07

    The first two weeks, day by day

    A light plan so the new hire always knows what is next. Leave room for questions and pairing.

    text
    Day 1   accounts, laptop, meet your buddy
Day 2   local setup, read the architecture tour
Day 3   first task: fix a docs page, open a PR
Day 4-5 pair on a small bug, ship it
Week 2  own a small feature end to end, shadow on-call for a day

  8. 08

    On-call and incidents

    When they join the rotation, how paging works, where runbooks live and what is expected during the first shadow shift.

  9. 09

    Who to ask

    A short table of areas and the team or channel that owns each one. Teams and channels, not individual names, so it does not go stale when people move.

Mistakes to avoid

  • Setup steps that assume tools the new hire does not have yet.
  • A wall of links with no order, so the first day is spent deciding what to read.
  • No first task picked in advance, so the new engineer waits for work.
  • Named individuals as owners of everything, out of date within a quarter.
  • A guide nobody owns, last edited by someone who left.

Questions about this template

How long should onboarding take?
Aim for a first merged change in the first three days and a small feature shipped in the first two weeks. Most of that speed comes from setup that works and tasks chosen in advance.
Who should own the onboarding guide?
One engineering manager or staff engineer, with every new hire expected to improve it. Signcodify can flag the page when it has not been touched for a set number of days.
Should this be public?
Usually not. Keep it in a private space your team can read. Some open source projects publish a version for new contributors.

Last updated October 30, 2026

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