Developer Onboarding Checklist
Updated 26 March 2026
A complete first 90 days checklist for engineering managers and new developers. Critical items marked in green must be completed on time to avoid extending the ramp-up period.
Day One
Owner: Engineering Manager
5 critical items
Laptop provisioned and delivered before start dateCritical
All accounts created: GitHub, cloud provider, Slack, emailCritical
Access to relevant repositories grantedCritical
Team introduction meeting scheduled (30 min)
Buddy assigned and introducedCritical
30-60-90 day plan document shared
First week schedule confirmed and sent
HR paperwork and compliance completedCritical
Week One
Owner: Developer + Buddy
4 critical items
Development environment set up and running locallyCritical
Able to run the full test suite locallyCritical
Architecture overview session completed with tech lead
PR workflow and branching strategy understoodCritical
Deployment pipeline and environments understood
On-call and incident runbook read
First small ticket assigned (docs, bug, test)Critical
Monitoring and alerting tools access confirmed
Month One
Owner: Developer
4 critical items
First feature PR reviewed and mergedCritical
Able to deploy to staging environment independently
Attended all team ceremonies at least once
Reviewed and understands data model / schema
Familiar with 5+ key services / modules in the codebaseCritical
30-day check-in with manager completedCritical
Any knowledge gaps identified and learning plan agreed
Security and compliance training completedCritical
Month Two
Owner: Developer
3 critical items
Consistently completing sprint commitmentsCritical
Debugging production issues with minimal guidance
Writing meaningful tests alongside featuresCritical
Contributing to technical design discussions
60-day check-in with manager completedCritical
Performance tracking against 30-60-90 day milestones
Comfortable with on-call rotation schedule
Proactively identifying code quality improvements
Month Three
Owner: Developer + Manager
4 critical items
Delivery velocity at 80-90% of team averageCritical
Has owned at least one feature end to endCritical
Contributing to team retrospective and process improvements
90-day review completedCritical
Onboarding officially marked completeCritical
Developer able to contribute to hiring interviews if needed
Training budget and continued learning plan confirmed
Compensation and role expectations confirmed
Why critical items matter
Missing critical items like laptop delivery, access provisioning, or the 30/60/90 day check-ins typically extends the ramp-up period by 1-3 weeks. At an average developer salary of $130,000/year, each extra week of suboptimal productivity costs around $1,500-$3,000. Getting the critical items right on time is one of the highest-ROI investments in the onboarding process.
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