Authors: Alberto Souza and Priscila Ruffa

Joining Nubank’s Engineering team means diving into a complex technical ecosystem, shaped by hundreds of microservices, distributed architectures, and technologies like Clojure and Datomic. It’s exciting, but also challenging, especially for someone who is new and wants to make a difference as quickly as possible.

This difference is born from an owner’s mindset. From day one of onboarding, every engineer is invited to take ownership, explore solutions, ask difficult questions, and develop the autonomy needed to navigate a living system that is constantly evolving. Here, learning the context is not passive; it’s an active practice of discovering, building, and challenging standards.

That’s why our onboarding goes beyond experiencing our culture. It must ensure that every new person, whom we call a Nuvinho, understands the context, feels supported, and has concrete means to learn what they need to contribute rapidly with real code. With this goal in mind, we completely re-evaluated the arrival experience, and the results changed not only indicators but also the practical journey of those who go through it.

Where we were and what we needed to solve

Before the changes, the Engineering team’s onboarding presented clear challenges. The content offered was generic and lacked connection to the real day-to-day of our technical challenges, which led many new software engineers to search for materials and explanations on their own.

Furthermore, the process was passive: the newcomer received calendar invites but lacked structured guidance on priorities, pace, or continuous monitoring. Progress essentially depended on the relationship with the Buddy.

This lack of immersion was also reflected in internal assessments. In November 2024, satisfaction with engineering onboarding registered below-target patterns, as measured by the CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score), a common market metric for evaluating people’s satisfaction with a product, service, or process. If we wanted new engineers to feel safe, prepared, and productive from early on, a change was necessary.

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How we redesigned software engineering onboarding

The new approach transformed functional onboarding into a practical, guided, and data-driven journey.

1. More contact, less solitary path

We created touchpoints distributed throughout the weeks, ensuring no one had to navigate the process in isolation. The Welcome Talks now greet newcomers with expectation alignment and a vision of engineering as a whole. Simultaneously, messages and reminders via Slack maintained the pace, helping everyone clearly understand what they needed to do and when.

2. Content connected to real-life work

Materials were revamped to reflect how work happens within Nubank. Learning moved away from abstract scenarios and began to be built upon challenges inspired by real services, with examples of architecture, tools, and engineering standards adopted internally. Thus, theory made more sense because it was immediately experienced in practice.

3. Metrics to measure learning

We also understood that it was necessary to evolve the way learning is monitored. Therefore, we created new ways to measure real progress. One of these was the Confiômetro, an internal tool that assesses confidence before and after each stage of the onboarding process. We also implemented standardized assessments to measure technical knowledge, and the CSAT was restructured to analyze three essential fronts: content relevance, concept comprehension, and preparedness to apply what was learned in daily work. 

4. A 30-day challenge

We defined a clear milestone: utilizing the first month to advance as much as possible in the onboarding. This brought pace, focus, and alignment between new software engineers and their managers. The journey ceased to be an individual-paced initiative and became a construction accompanied end-to-end.

Results and learnings

Since the implementation of the new program, signs of improvement have appeared consistently, both in the perception of the new software engineers and in the feedback from the teams that received them. The onboarding experience began to be evaluated significantly more positively, with advancements in content clarity, relevance, and preparedness to apply knowledge in real work. What was previously seen as an unstructured journey began to be perceived as organized, useful, and connected to the day-to-day.

“The Nubankers were much more prepared to work on a task in our sprint because they were already familiar with Clojure and Datomic, in addition to Nubank’s architecture. So, it was just a matter of providing context about our services and scopes.” – Leonardo Marinho, Engineering Manager II at Nubank

The participants also reported an expressive gain in confidence at the end of the first weeks, reaching a 100% increase in confidence. Knowledge assessments showed clear improvements, with greater consistency across scores, an indication that the program is helping to equalize the technical level of newcomers, regardless of their previous trajectory.

At the end of the program, the Nuvinhos also indicated feeling more ready to work in Nubank’s Engineering, a direct reflection of a more structured, more consistent, and more practice-oriented onboarding. Leaders who evaluated the growth potential of the new people noted that they arrive better prepared to evolve within the expectations defined for the next level, reinforcing the importance of an efficient onboarding for the technical and career journey.

“I noticed that the Nubankers were much more proficient with the tools, frameworks, and technologies we use here at Nu, and they were able to deliver their first tasks within the team very quickly. I also found it very positive that they already had knowledge of how to use Cursor.” – Bruna Sanglard, Engineering Manager II at Nubank

Conclusion

The new onboarding program has already consolidated as a structured and data-driven model, and the next cycles follow the same logic of continuous evolution that guides Nubank Engineering. We continue to refine the experience based on direct feedback from the cohorts and leadership, expanding practical challenges connected to real services and strengthening the touchpoints that ensure engagement and clarity from day one.

This transformation showed that preparing people to contribute quickly requires more than sharing study materials; it also requires context, close monitoring, and metrics that allow for objective progress tracking. The impact is already visible in the signs of confidence, learning outcomes, and the leadership’s perception of the new engineers’ preparedness level.

More than just reorganizing a process, this initiative reinforces something that is part of Nubank’s daily life: creating experiences that work for people, reducing friction whenever possible, and making decisions guided by evidence, not assumptions. By creating an intentional journey connected to the real work environment, we are not only accelerating the entry of new talent but also strengthening the foundation that will allow Engineering to continue scaling with quality in the coming years.

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