Software Engineering Internship Experience at Elucidata
Elucidata is a startup focused on accelerating the process of drug discovery by building a platform that provides algorithms and tools to process, analyze, and visualize large biological datasets.
Getting Hired
I applied for the internship through Coding Ninjas’ job portal. I received a link for an online assessment on codejudge.io. Few days after completing that assessment I received a call to schedule an online interview.
The interview process consisted of 3 rounds of which 2 were technical and a call with the company’s co-founder Mr. Shwetabh Pathak. The technical interview covered both data structure and algorithm as well as side projects and technologies I worked on.
In the end, I received a call from Arunima informing me that I was selected and will be joining them as a software engineering intern in their newly formed Polly Compute team.
What it’s like to intern as a software engineer at Elucidata?
When I started my internship I had no experience working on any real-time projects. The first couple of days Vidit walked me through the architecture and the tech stack of Polly and shared some online resources to get familiar with AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, etc.
After a couple of weeks, I was asked to build an API to generate and run the Kubernetes workflow on AWS EKS.
At Elucidata interns are treated as full-time employees. Interns are expected to attend all meetings, work on real projects, and perform 100%.
The teammates Sabu, Vidit, and Jainik were very supportive. I could go to anyone and ask anything. We had lots of discussions on how to implement certain features or how to resolve a particular bug, and every time I learned something new. They helped me in improving the quality of the code I wrote by following best practices and standards to ensure the performance and scalability of the project.
During the project, I learned working with large codebases, unit testing my code, and writing proper git messages. I also learned a lot about cloud services and microservice architecture as Polly is built on it.
How is the work culture?
Elucidata has a pretty chilled work culture something you would expect from a startup you could work from home if you want
Hierarchy doesn’t exist at Elucidata. You are not supposed to address people with Sir/Ma’am (something I struggled with) and everyone is just a Slack message away.
There were meetings throughout the week at Elucidata. From Shuruate-hafta on Monday mornings where we set goals for the week to Tech meetups on Thursdays where all the engineers gathered and presented new technologies/concepts they came across and ways to optimize and speed up the development and at the end Friday evening Gapshap a casual meet and greet to get to know your co-workers.
Apart from work, there were fun team-building exercises like sports events and office parties.
TL;DR
Elucidata is a great startup operating in the niche field of drug discovery and moreover, it is a great place to work at. I met a lot of passionate and talented people there and I cannot believe how much I have grown technically and professionally during my time there, I couldn't have asked for anything better. Now that I got an opportunity to work with them again I feel blessed.
