For companies
Turn your backlog into talent opportunities.
Every company has useful work it never gets to. ITpunks turns that work into ten-week projects for a coached team of four — and turns the people who did it into candidates you have already watched.
Why work with ITpunks
What you get, plainly.
Access talent
Meet young people who already build with modern AI tools, selected for how they learn.
Test ideas
Feasibility experiments, automation trials, data questions — answered before you commit a budget.
Create prototypes
A working prototype, a short write-up and a demo. Not production, and not slides either.
Identify future employees
Ten weeks of watching someone work on your problem is the best hiring signal there is.
Support youth development
A structured, ethical alternative to unpaid internships that go nowhere.
Work with the Technology LT ecosystem
Projects that need more can continue with Technology LT’s AI and automation teams.
What to submit
Good challenges look like this.
- An automation you keep postponing
- An AI experiment you want to test safely
- A prototype or internal tool
- A data question with real data behind it
- A research or market question
- A digital improvement your customers would notice
What we decline
- Production-critical work with deadlines and SLAs
- Pure volume work (migrate 300 pages, write 500 tests)
- Anything that needs personal or confidential data the team can’t work with safely
- Challenges without someone on your side who has 2–3 hours a week
How it works
From challenge to prototype.
01
Submit
A short form. Ten minutes.
02
Scoping call
Thirty minutes to turn the problem into a ten-week scope and agree terms.
03
Team & mentor
We form a team of four and pair it with a mentor and your coach.
04
Ten weeks
Weekly demos, a mid-point validation with your users, a final demo.
05
Prototype & people
You own the deliverable. You talk to the team first if you want to hire.
FAQ
Questions companies ask
What kind of challenge fits?
A real problem that is useful to you but not production-critical: a prototype, an automation experiment, a data question, an internal tool, a research question, a market test. It should take a team of four roughly ten weeks and have someone on your side who cares about the answer.
What do we have to commit?
One senior person for two to three hours a week to coach the team, a clear problem statement, and access to whatever the team needs to work on it (test data, sandbox systems). We ask for time because that is what makes the outcome useful to you.
Who owns the result?
By default the deliverable is assigned to your company under the project agreement; participants keep the right to show a sanitised version in their portfolio. Confidential data stays under NDA. The exact terms are agreed in writing before the project starts.
Is this free labour?
No, and we decline challenges that are. Projects must have learning value, a prototype scope and mentoring; participants are never directed as employees and never billed by the hour. Companies support the programme financially; the details depend on the project type.
Can we hire participants afterwards?
Yes. Watching someone work on your problem for ten weeks is the best hiring signal there is. Companies that sponsor a project get first conversations with their team; any employment is agreed directly with the participant.
How fast can we start?
Submit the challenge, we review it within a few working days and schedule a 30-minute scoping call. Projects start with cohorts; smaller challenges can sometimes start sooner with a matched team.