This document outlines the hiring process at Axelerant for Drupal Engineers. It is designed to help you determine if Axelerant is the right fit for you and to set you up for success throughout the hiring process. This guide clarifies our expectations and what we look for in candidates. If you have questions at any point, feel free to contact the recruitment team.

About Axelerant and the Drupal team

Axelerant is a digital services agency specializing in open-source software solutions, particularly Drupal. We are committed to contributing meaningfully to the Drupal and broader open-source communities as responsible and inclusive participants. Our core values—Enthusiasm, Kindness, and Openness—guide how we collaborate, and we look for these values in every team member.

As a Drupal Engineer at Axelerant, you'll collaborate with others to build complex solutions for our clients. Our work emphasizes teamwork over individual effort, and our key performance indicators reflect this. While we work remotely and respect flexible schedules, we also expect proactive communication, shared accountability, and team-oriented thinking.

We follow and extend standard Drupal best practices in code and delivery, using tools and workflows that we openly share (see our GitHub). You’re encouraged to contribute to and improve these processes.

To support your success, we provide training, mentoring, peer support, coaching, and access to resources for your development. Learn more on our Benefits page.

If you have any questions about working at Axelerant, feel free to talk to our recruitment team.

The Process

The hiring process typically takes a few weeks depending on availability and response timelines, but it can be expedited to complete within a week in some cases.

1. Applying

Apply via our Careers Page. After applying, your profile is created in our Applicant Tracking System (ATS), and you may receive a questionnaire or a call to schedule an initial conversation.

What we look for:

• Alignment with job responsibilities (not just titles).

• Clarity and attention to detail in resume and written responses.

• Community participation (e.g., Drupal.org, LinkedIn). While not mandatory, contributions are valued.

• Relevant certifications (e.g., Acquia). Expired ones are still helpful to mention.

How we evaluate

We check for general fitment as per the job description. Depending on the level you apply, we check the quality of your written responses to our questionnaire and the content of your resume. For example, if you are applying for L3 or higher positions, we want to see some experience working in large teams and leading small teams. Similarly, such positions also require above-average writing skills. Common errors such as consistently poor spelling, lack of capitalization, and other common grammatical errors may lead to rejection. We are not looking for 100% accuracy and this is not the only factor we consider anyway. Still, glaring errors reduce your chances of moving ahead, especially those that are easily avoided by a spell check or a tool like Grammarly.

We also check your resume for the kind of work you have done. We don’t depend on the titles but look at the kind of work you have done in the past. Rich and specific detail would help us in making a better decision and finding alignment.

Another area we consider is your online presence. We look at your Drupal.org profile to see your participation in the community along with other places like LinkedIn. We understand that you may not have had the opportunity to contribute to Drupal and hence you won’t be rejected for not having a profile. That said, we highly value community engagement, and having an online presence can work in your favor.

Finally, we also value certifications, especially those provided by Acquia. If you hold any certifications (even if expired), be sure to list them.

Culture Conversation

The first conversation we would have is what we call a “Culture Conversation”. This is to find alignment between us in our values and basic check on fitment by gauging the candidates’ interest for the role, communication skills, clarifying various points about their application/resume, and answering any questions they have regarding the process/company.

How we evaluate

We are not necessarily looking for culture fitment when hiring but we do look at ways in which you add value to Axelerant. We want to know more about how well you align with our core values and what perspectives you bring to the table. Here, we also check how clearly you can communicate using English (our language of communication across the teams) and how relevant your experience is to Axelerant.

After the culture conversation, you may move to the peer interview stage. Since this is a lengthy conversation and online calls can be tiring, we have split this into two rounds.

Peer Interview Round 1: Background and Common Technical concepts

The first round covers your background and the challenges you have faced in your career. We are sure you might face unique challenges every day but we would like to hear about those challenges which demonstrate your skills and capabilities for the level you are applying. For example, at L1 we would expect you to share challenges related to learning new technologies and meeting deadlines. At L3 or L4, we would be more interested in complex challenges such as integrations and challenges in the team. This typically lasts 20-30 minutes.

This is followed by a discussion on common technical concepts. We usually talk about common Drupal site-building or development but it may change depending on your background. We expect this to take about 15-20 minutes of your time.

Finally, we look forward to answering any questions you might have regarding Axelerant, the job role, the hiring process, or anything else. In fact, we value meaningful questions and discussions from you.

Interim: Coding Test

After the first round, we want to know more about your technical skills and invite you to submit an existing code sample or take our coding test. You can read more about our requirements for an existing code sample here. If you don’t have an existing code sample that satisfies these conditions, we are happy to send you a quick coding test (we don’t believe in live coding exercises during the interview). We would send this test over GitHub and assign it directly to your profile.

The coding test is designed to be similar to typical day-to-day tasks at Axelerant. We have taken care to keep the tasks relatable to actual requirements we see while keeping them short enough so that you can finish the test in a reasonable time. More details about the test, the tasks, and what we look for in your code submission are documented at length in the repository you would receive.

How we evaluate

As you work on various issues in the code repository, we could respond to those issues or your pull requests directly. When required, we would expect your responses at reasonable times on the issues and pull requests (typically within a week or two).

Peer Interview Round 2: In-depth Interview

If we decide to move forward, we invite you to round 2 where we have an in-depth conversation about technology. The list of topics will be shared with you well before the interview and we expect that this would help you prepare in advance. We don’t want you to be surprised by the questions in the interview. The topics apply to all levels but the kind of questions we ask depend on the level for which you are applying. For example, we expect applicants at L3 or L4 level to be more familiar with topics such as CI/CD, automation, and high availability. There is also a chance we might use your code sample for a discussion if necessary.

How we evaluate

In these rounds, we look at your past experiences and challenges and how relevant that is to what you’re going to do here. For the code walkthrough section, we evaluate how clearly you are able to explain the code and why you wrote the code the way you did. As mentioned before, we also check if you are using Drupal’s coding style and other programming standard practices.

We also check for your technical expertise based on the tasks we do day-to-day. We don’t look for 100% coverage here with the full understanding that nobody can know everything. We look for certain baseline skills depending on the role and anything on top of that is a good-to-have bonus. For this reason, we may talk about a lot of topics and ask a lot of in-depth questions but we don’t expect you to answer every question.

Offer

If everything checks out, we set up a conversation with you to discuss the offer and the next steps. Depending on your performance in the interviews, we may adjust the role so that there is a higher chance of success.

Know the team

Kanika is a recruiting operations specialist and the SPOC throughout the hiring process for candidates and the business. She will meet the candidates initially before or after the test for preliminary screening to find alignment or fitment between them and our requirements. To find out more about her, read her LinkedIn profile.

Hussain is the director of PHP/Drupal services at Axelerant. He is accountable for the team’s growth at Axelerant and knows hiring is an important channel for this. It is very likely that you will be meeting with Hussain during your peer interview rounds. To find out more about him, read his README, his drupal.org profile, or his LinkedIn profile.

Kunal is a Drupal Engineer at Axelerant. Apart from working on the challenging projects, he spends a lot of time improving the recruitment practices and it is likely you will meet him during the interview. To find more about him, read his Drupal.org profile, or his LinkedIn profile.

Gaurav is a Drupal Engineer at Axelerant focusing on contributions. He is a member of the Technology COE at Axelerant who leads our various community initiatives and is himself a prolific contributor on drupal.org. To read more about him, see his Drupal.org profile or his LinkedIn profile.

Getting Help

I hope this document helps you understand Axelerant better and set you up for a successful interview experience with us. We appreciate any feedback you might have about this document and our hiring process. For this or any questions you may have about working with us, please reach out to the recruitment team.