STEP programme · DAM placements
Work placements that look like the job, not like another subject.
Student Training & Education Programs. Since 2025, first- and second-year students of DAM — Spain's vocational degree in cross-platform application development — have been working at Valfiguer on the same code that serves customers. Remote, with an assigned mentor, and reviewed by the same standard we apply to anyone on the team.
The programme costs the school and the students nothing.
- Schools
- 2
- Since
- 2025
- Format
- 100% remote
- Cost to the school
- €0
Schools
Schools we already work with
STEP has been running since 2025. These two state schools have sent DAM students and seen the result. If your head of studies wants a reference before deciding, it is the best one we can offer: people who have already been through it.
What students do
Four things a syllabus has no room for
What defines the programme is that there is no parallel practice project. Students work on the product already in production, and that changes what gets learned.
A classroom exercise ends when it compiles. A feature in production ends when someone uses it and does not write to you.
How it works
From your school's email to the first change in production
The whole programme is remote, so the school's province decides nothing. What follows is the full path, so a head of studies knows exactly what they are signing up to.
The school requests seats
Through the form on this page or by email. We need the course, how many students and the dates of the placement period.
Calendar and agreement
We fit the calendar to the school's and work from the school's own placement agreement, on its regional education authority's template.
An assigned mentor
Each student gets someone from the team as their mentor, and the school gets a single point of contact for the whole period.
Environment and platform on day one
A Mentora account, access to the repository and to the tracker, and a first task that is bounded and real. There is no week of shadowing.
Work inside the team
Tasks from the same backlog as everyone else, code reviews, team meetings and direct contact with DAROT when the work is AI.
A written report for the school
Documentation of the work done and how it was assessed, in the format the school needs for its placement records.
For the school
What the school gets, beyond the seats
One contact, not a switchboard
One person answers for the whole period: incidents, calendar, assessment and paperwork.
Documentation that works for the records
Follow-up is delivered in writing, with what each student did and the standard it was judged by.
Genuinely remote
No travel, and no dependence on there being a tech company nearby. A rural school competes on equal terms.
No cost
Neither for the school nor for families. We are not selling training to the school: this is what the company puts in.
DAROT
The research group they work with
Development and Research of Technological Innovations is the team that researches and applies artificial intelligence inside Valfiguer. What comes out of it ends up in KERN, the group's AI line, and from there in products already in production. For a DAM student that means seeing AI as what it is inside a company — one more piece to measure, integrate and maintain — rather than as a demo.
DAROT · Development and Research of Technological Innovations
Why we do it
Out of self-interest, and it is worth saying so
The distance between finishing a DAM course and being useful on a product team is real, and someone pays for it: either the school, simulating an environment it cannot have, or the first employer, for six months. Closing it from the inside is cheaper for everyone and produces better professionals.
STEP and DAROT are the education and outreach half of Valfiguer's standing commitment to making software accessible: first-rate technology should not depend on having had access to it before. The stated goal is that by 2030 the company is a reference in technical training and outreach, not only in product. Saying it now, with two schools and a small programme, is what makes it possible to hold us to it later.
Two things this programme is not
It is not a pool of cheap labour and it is not a disguised recruiting channel. Students come through their school and on their course's terms, and their work is judged by the same standard as anyone's. It is not a course either: nobody spends three months watching videos with a mentor who never shows up.
Frequently asked
What heads of studies ask
What heads of studies ask before saying yes, answered by the person who will run the programme. If yours is missing, write to us and it gets added here.
The level of their course. STEP takes first- and second-year DAM students, and the first task is scoped to what they have already covered in class. What is asked for is not prior level, it is consistency: showing up, asking and delivering.
Remote from beginning to end, with fixed team meetings and live code reviews. That is why a school in any province can take part without its students travelling.
No. The programme costs the school and the students nothing, and we sell the school no training service.
It is agreed with each school for the year and the placement period, because the real limit is how many students we can mentor well at once. That is why the form asks how many students and on what dates before anything is promised.
Each student has a mentor from the Valfiguer team who works with the school's placement tutor. Assessment goes by work delivered and reviewed, and is handed to the school in writing at the end of the period.
We work from the school's own collaboration agreement and its education authority's template, which is what we have already done with the two schools we have worked with since 2025.
Request seats
Tell us what your school needs this year
A person from the team answers, not an autoresponder. If the placement calendar does not fit the year already under way, we say so in the first reply instead of stringing you along.