What I Learned From My Internships

I've had the chance to intern at a few very different companies, from a biomedical research lab at UC Berkeley to enterprise networking at Blackhawk Network. Each one taught me something I didn't expect.

UC Berkeley (2021): Respect the data

My first real engineering role was processing 1TB+ of microscopy data. The biggest lesson wasn't about Python or NumPy. It was about being careful with data pipelines. One wrong transformation and you've corrupted thousands of images that took weeks to generate. I learned to validate early, validate often, and never assume your input looks the way you think it does.

Tarana Wireless (2023): Automation compounds

At Tarana, I built a bot that classified support tickets with 99% accuracy. The impact wasn't just the accuracy. It was that the system kept working after I left. Automation that compounds is worth ten times more than automation that needs babysitting. I learned to build things that run without me.

Ciena (2024): Ship to where people already are

At Ciena, the most impactful decision wasn't technical. It was integrating our LLM tools into Microsoft Teams instead of building a separate interface. 10k+ daily queries happened because we put the tool where people already worked. I learned that distribution matters as much as the product.

Blackhawk Network (2025): Own the whole system

At Blackhawk, I built the monitoring system end-to-end: ingestion pipeline, data storage, AI diagnostics, alerting, and dashboard. Owning the full stack taught me how pieces fit together in ways you can't learn by working on isolated features. When something breaks, you know where to look because you built all of it.

What stuck

The common thread across all of these: build things that matter, ship them where people can use them, and own enough of the system to understand how it actually works.