The InternX at ActionIQ, Summer 2022
The AIQ Internship program is designed to foster the next generation of tech leaders by providing skills, knowledge, and experiences to support both personal and professional growth.
This summer we welcomed eight new interns to our AIQ Summer Intern Class from various backgrounds and schools, to join our Engineering, Data Science, Professional Services, Marketing and Sales teams. We also partnered with BreakThroughTech in the winter months, for a “Sprint”ernship — you can read more about that program and our recent Sprinterns here.
While summer always flies by, we make sure our interns are immersed in the day to day of AIQ’s culture, our business, and of course the magic that is summer in New York City. The experience is built to engage our interns in real world scenarios and business challenges while strengthening their professional network and connections within the AIQ and NYC tech community.
Outside the office, our interns saw NYC from new heights at 1 Vanderbilt, caught a Broadway show, and tried bites from some city staples at Smorgasburg.
We always look forward to welcoming our summer interns and while this isn’t a small undertaking for a growing startup like ActionIQ, it is an important one to us for the following reasons:
- We are committed to being a great, NYC-based enterprise software company. To do that, we want to contribute to our local community and help develop the next generation of tech leaders.
- We seek out diverse perspectives and points of view. We always learn something about ourselves, our product, and platform through our intern programs.
- In Engineering specifically, we celebrate a growth mindset. Growing a company is hard and we strive to try new things and be prepared to teach and share knowledge. This is a great way to do that.
- It is so fun! This is a program that generates positive energy throughout our company.
As per any of our opportunities at AIQ or if you are interested in what we do, please do reach out if you would like to learn more or have questions.
But that’s enough from us, let’s hear from our team of Summer 2022 AIQ Interns about their experience…
Name: Binny Naik
What team and projects did you work on this summer?
I got the opportunity to work with the Data Science team at ActionIQ this summer. Here, the project that I worked on included performing data exploration & visualization, advanced analytics, and developing ML models. It was an interesting project that involved fetching hundreds and thousands of SQL queries along with its metadata and applying data preprocessing, data cleaning, data modeling tasks on them to eventually analyze them for the time an individual query takes to run. I not only got the chance to brainstorm upon the features to extract from the queries that would influence the runtime by myself but my mentor also helped me navigate through the approach. After finalizing the features, I implemented data visualization tasks to facilitate exploration of data. Moreover, I also worked on implementing ML models such as random forest to predict the time a SQL query would take to run in the future. Overall, the project gave me a holistic learning experience and introduced me to several tools and technologies that I had not used in my career before.
What was the highlight of your time at AIQ?
The highlight of my internship tenure at AIQ was the time when I learned to work with ML flow and ML in production techniques in Databricks. It was great to learn how different model parameters, metrics, and code sources can be auto logged and studied to decide the best features and metrics to be considered for a model. Overall, I really enjoyed the time when all of us interns were taken to Summit, 1 Vanderbilt trip for an event created by AIQ. It made me realize that AIQ really values work-life balance and tries to help interns make the most out of their internship experience; not only technically but socially as well!
What were the main surprises and learning experiences of the internship?
The main surprise for me at AIQ as an intern was that the interns are treated as nothing less than a full-time employee in terms of their contribution towards a project. My ideas and opinions on the project were valued and heard equally as any full-time employee. Moreover, I was also impressed by the overall company culture and the efforts that individual employees make to add value the culture of the company. It was pleasing to know that AIQ actually respects the work-life balance of all employees. Additionally, my learning experience was fruitful as I got to learn and use tools such as Plotly express, Datadog, Databricks, Sequel Ace, and Pendo. My team also motivated me to attend the Data+AI Summit 2022 that offered insights into Databricks more. I was fortunate enough to have my manager and mentor always by my side to help me whenever I got stuck on errors and got confused on any specific approaches. The support and clarity of communication enabled me to advance my knowledge in data science and analytics.
What’s next for you?
After this summer, I will return to school for the fall semester to continue my journey in getting my Masters in Data Science degree from Columbia University. I am excited for the fall semester as it’s my last semester before I get my Masters degree as well as during that tenure I will get the opportunity to work on an industry capstone project while studying a course to complete my credit requirements. Simultaneously, in the fall semester, I will prepare for data science interviews to start looking for full-time jobs as Data Scientist or Data Engineer beginning January 2023.
Name: Catherine Wang
What team and projects did you work on this summer?
I was a part of the Design team with my manager Sarah, Bansri, Kevin, Hafi, and Unsun. I worked on the visual design components, from creating eye-catching email headers to rebranding PDF guides viewed by potential ActionIQ clients. Over the summer, ActionIQ was in the middle of a rebrand to give the company a fresh new look! I was given a lot of freedom to play with the new colors and shapes to see how I can use them effectively in different situations.
What was the highlight of your time at AIQ?
The people. Sarah was a really amazing communicator and her organizational skills were very infectious. Everyone else in the design team was equally as friendly and came from a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences. I also really cherish my fellow interns. Although it was a bit awkward at the beginning of the internship, we gradually warmed up to each other and ended up spending time outside the office, like going to see Sleep No More and biking along the river in Roosevelt Island.
What were the main surprises and learning experiences of the internship?
As a graphic design major, I was never exposed to B2B companies or CDPs in school. Therefore, one of the main goals was to just understand what it’s like to design for a B2B company versus a company that directly sells to customers. The products built in AIQ are very technical and serve very specific audiences, so I worked with a lot of content that felt unfamiliar to me. I was also surprised by how organized and systematic the design process at ActionIQ was- from naming conventions to really complex Monday boards. I will try to keep up these habits in my own practice so that I can spend more time designing rather than being hung up by a messy workflow.
What’s next for you?
I have one more year of college, and I look forward to doing many things like skiing and late night boba trips with college friends before we graduate!
Name: Elizabeth Hsu
What team and projects did you work on this summer?
I worked on the Customer Intelligence Team, and I worked on adding labels and a category feature that allows customers to sort their Attributes into categories and labels.
What was the highlight of your time at AIQ?
I really enjoyed getting to know everyone from all the different departments within the company. We had “Leadership Chats” throughout the internship where we would talk with various different heads of departments. It was super insightful to hear about the various career paths. I definitely took tidbits and advice from each person I met and hope to implement them into my life as I develop my career! One of the best parts about AIQ was meeting the most friendly, interesting, and helpful people. Since the first day, everyone has offered support to the interns, and I never felt afraid to reach out to anyone for help or even just to chat! I will 100% miss the supportive environment at AIQ.
What were the main surprises and learning experiences of the internship?
Something that surprised me was how much the interns are valued at AIQ. We were treated with the same level of responsibility and respect as a full-time employee. During the Engineering Offsite the engineering teams created a group to discuss how each team could improve. I distinctly remember Danny Graham (Staff engineer on Customer Intelligence team) stopping the conversation to ask us interns for feedback. I was so surprised that Danny wanted our opinion, given that we had barely started the internship. An act like that truly showed that despite being interns, our opinions and skills mattered to the company, and they had faith in us to make impactful contributions to AIQ. As an intern, I felt fully immersed in the company as if I was a full-time hire. One of the biggest learning experiences I had during the internship was learning to get over the fear of asking questions and speaking up. It can be super intimidating to be in a meeting full of engineers with years of experience, so I definitely had to learn how to overcome that. AIQ made it super easy to feel comfortable and fostered an environment where I could always reach out for help.
What’s next for you?
After this, I’ll be heading back to college to finish my final year and continue pursuing my career as a software engineer!
Name: Huan Le
What team and projects did you work on this summer?
During this internship, I was embedded into the Customer Intelligence team in the Engineering department. For the whole course of this internship, the other two engineering interns and I were working on a new feature that allows customers to categorize and filter their created Attributes (columns) by labels and categories. The project also created an opportunity for us to study and understand how to navigate the codebase as well as how things are coupled together from the backend to the frontend.
What was the highlight of your time at AIQ?
The most memorable part of my time at AIQ was when I saw myself grow from a college student to an actual employee of a tech company. Over the 2 month period, I learned to work efficiently and collaboratively in a team. Working in a team requires lots of communication, which is a very crucial skill for engineers. It helps us grow together and deliver better products overall. Additionally, I developed a sense of responsibility as my work is a contribution to the company’s value. When I pushed a piece of code, I had to make sure that it not only passes the tests but also is a good code and maintainable.
What were the main surprises and learning experiences of the internship?
What surprised me the most about this internship was the fact that everyone was so nice and treated all the interns like full time employees. Everyone was so keen to answer our questions. We got the opportunity to talk to Tasso Argyros and Nitay Joffe, the co-founders of ActionIQ, and all the VP’s of different departments. It was such an honor to talk and learn from them and get to know their journey from being interns like us to being where they are today.
What’s next for you?
After this internship ends, I will move to California and continue my journey there.
Name: Xiurong Yu
What team and projects did you work on this summer?
I worked on the Customer Intelligence team and worked on the Categories and Labels for Attributes project.
What was the highlight of your time at AIQ?
The highlight of my time at AIQ was learning how to work both collaboratively and independently. When starting the project, three of the software engineering interns including myself had to work together on the project, and I was introduced to “mob-programming” where we take turns driving and navigating. The driver will code and the navigator will provide instructions. This experience has taught me a lot about communication and teamwork. Toward the middle of the internship, we split into working independently on our tickets and that taught me how to learn and navigate the code base. Most importantly, I learned how to take initiative and ask questions to drive my task forward.
What were the main surprises and learning experiences of the internship?
The main surprise was the people at ActionIQ. The people at ActionIQ are all very approachable and amazing to work with. The biggest learning experience of the internship was learning how to talk to different people in different teams. During my time at ActionIQ, I was able to talk and hear perspectives of people outside of the engineering team and see how their work contributes to ActionIQ.
What’s next for you?
I will continue my studies at the University of Rochester towards a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science.
Name: Joshua Alavanza
What team and projects did you work on this summer?
During this internship I worked with the Product Specialist team within the Professional Services division. Throughout the course of the summer I was exposed to every aspect of a Forward Deployed engineer’s responsibilities. This included customer work, internal tickets, client facing meetings, and projects. But the two projects that I felt taught me the most were the UID generator, and the dependency finder project.
What was the highlight of your time at AIQ?
The highlight of my time at AIQ was the hands-on work that I was given. The UID generator script and the dependency finder were both fantastic learning experiences. The dependency finder specifically involved a lot of work with Thrift clients, a technology I had never heard of before, a little daunting to say the least. But by the end of it, I was surprised to find that I felt very comfortable working with Thrift clients and amazed at the true power of this tool. Most importantly, I developed my ability to learn new concepts and technologies quickly and act on these newly acquired skills to deliver something tangible.
What were the main surprises and learning experiences of the internship?
The main surprise for me was seeing how quickly things move at a startup. Sitting in on client meetings and seeing data engineers make decisions immediately was something I was not expecting to see. And that culture of high individual impact is seen throughout every aspect of the workflow.
What’s next for you?
At the end of August I will continue pursuing my Bachelors of Science in Computer Science and hope to find a job in the tech industry after graduation in the spring.
Name: Kylie Shelon
What team and projects did you work on this summer?
This summer I worked with the Marketing Team and got the chance to work under both Demand Generation and Product Marketing. With that, I had multiple projects ranging from competitor analysis for paid and organic socials, to account based marketing research and partner logo auditing, and much more. I got the chance to do a variety of projects across the board which really helped me learn about marketing as a whole.
What was the highlight of your time at AIQ?
The highlight of my time at AIQ would be the amount of collaboration I saw in my work across the marketing team. I never knew how much effort went into each campaign, each social media post, each webinar, and even a company rebranding until this summer where I got to witness the support each sector of the marketing team provided each other. It was really special to see everyone so encouraging and supportive, even during hardships.
What were the main surprises and learning experiences of the internship?
A surprise I had during my experience at AIQ would have to be learning about how many different facets of marketing there are and breaking down the details of each facet. I learned how much can be contributed across the board. Everyone wants to help everyone improve and share ideas, which is not something you learn in school.
What’s next for you?
After this internship I will be finishing up my last semester and then graduating!
Name: Madeline Jin
What team and projects did you work on this summer?
This summer I worked on a series of projects with sales enablement. I was tasked with going through the SDR new hire onboarding process, pointing out unnecessary content, and creating guides to make it more digestible. Most of my work consisted of going through content (webinars, demos, lessons) and time-stamping them and creating questions so that future viewers will be more engaged and thus get more out of them. Along with another intern, I also went through Showpad and retagged many of the assets and rebranded most of the pages. Additionally, I was in charge of keeping track of day to day SDR metrics.
What was the highlight of your time at AIQ?
The best part of this internship was not a specific moment, but the chance to meet amazing new people and to work with them. I was very lucky to be on such a collaborative and supportive team.
What were the main surprises and learning experiences of the internship?
Going into this internship I was feeling very nervous because I had never had a job before but I was pleasantly surprised. Everyone at AIQ is very welcoming and willing to help. I think one of the most important lessons I learned is how vital it is to make strong connections and how that improves your day to day experience
What’s next for you?
I will be going back to Boston College to finish my senior year! After that I hope to continue a career in sales and marketing.
Congratulations to our awesome Summer 2022 interns and we cannot wait to see all that’s ahead for you!
