POA

During the summer of 2023, I had the opportunity to intern at Rocket Mortgage as a software engineer. I was a part of the Engineering Experience train where my team focused on making Rocket’s applications functionable and up to date. There were many tasks my team worked on but specifically, I worked on updating broken or terminated links on websites that many engineers used in the company. This was my main task during my internship since there were hundreds of links that were incorrect or broken. I was able to use Visual Studio to edit the websites that were established either in Javascript or TypeScript. Once I found and fixed the URL I would push my changes in git, a version control system, so that my mentor and other team members who oversought the websites could approve my changes.
During a typical day at work, my day usually starts off with a standup meeting just to discuss what I accomplished the day before, what I would be working on today, and if I require assistance with anything. These meetings ensured that we were all on the same page and were not stuck on any task. I would then work on my assignments based on priority, my high-priority task was the broken links but sometimes I would get assigned other smiley tasks like code fixes that I would do as well. I usually have other team meetings as well with other engineering teams or meetings with my mentor just to check up and see if I need any assistance.
Throughout my internship I experienced many tech applications and coding languages that I was never exposed to or even heard of so it was a learning curve trying to learn and use these new systems. However, I felt like my CS classes as well as the SGC colloquium prepared me to take on challenging tasks and get used to learning new technologies constantly. These classes helped me build my analytical thinking skills and get used to working with new applications as well as new coding languages, which significantly helped me during my internship since I was constantly exposed to new functionalities. Due to this, I feel like I’ve gained so much knowledge of how engineers develop and test applications they produce, and this will be useful for future internships and projects as well.
This internship was my first experience as a software engineer and it is definitely something I want to pursue in the future. I really enjoyed learning how companies implement technology for their specific purpose and agendas. This experience has helped me to hone my coding and understanding of various technical applications which is so useful for future internships and jobs. This internship has opened up so many paths since now since I can use what I learned here for other internships in the future. These projects will help me in the long run since I was exposed to various technologies and working in a corporate environment which is useful when looking for future opportunities.
During one project I did have to work with an intern for a project. We both had to work on fixing PHP packages and updating its pipeline since it was really old. Since I was new to the process and the other intern had done it a couple of times. he explained the procedure which helped very much. Over two weeks we would work together, and if any of us had bugs we would try and fix them using CircleCI. It was nice to be able to bounce ideas back and forth with a team member, in computer science this was a new experience for me since in college you usually aren't allowed to discuss code or collaborate on projects.
I recommend this experience to SGC students especially if they're interested in software development or coding in general since it gives you a deep insight into how engineers function in the corporate world. Furthermore, it gives you an opportunity to hone your skills and gives you a whole network of people who work in the field you’re passionate about.