Inside Feedzai Summer Internships

This summer, we had our largest batch of summer interns ever! From over 200 applicants, we welcomed 15 interns across our 3 offices in Portugal and across several teams at Feedzai.

From week one, our interns, with the guidance of experienced Feedzaians as their mentors, had the opportunity to work on projects that matter and create real value for the company.

We’re very grateful that they chose to spend the summer with us at the office. Not only did they learn a lot and help build the future of Feedzai, but the interns also had tons of fun!

Overall, our internships went very well, and we have the numbers to back this claim:

• 85% of interns rated the likelihood of recommending a Feedzai summer internship to a friend as 10/10, yielding an NPS of 91.
• Interns rated their satisfaction with mentors as “very high.”¹
• 73% of mentors rated the return on mentoring investment as “very high”¹ and 27% rated it “high.”²
• Interns created real value. 73% of mentors rated value generated as “high”² or “very high.”¹
• Summer internships were just the starting point… 11 interns will continue to work at Feedzai.

In early September, we had an all-day event for the interns to showcase their work to the rest of the company. The feedback was great, and the quality of the presentations was truly impressive!

Before saying goodbye to our class of 2019, we sat down with four interns from different areas and asked them to share some of their thoughts about what it was like to be a Feedzai intern.

Here’s what they had to say:

Name: Francisco Sousa

Role: Case Manager Summer Intern

Location: Lisbon

Which team did you intern for? What project did you work on at Feedzai? The Case Manager team welcomed me with a project that was long overdue, but no one had ever had the opportunity to start it: a makeover of a search form.

What was your favorite thing about being a Feedzai intern? Actually feeling that I was working to solve a problem that impacts people all over the world and makes their lives easier was a big motivation while interning at Feedzai.

What advice would you like to share with current/upcoming Feedzai interns? You will be surrounded by so many individuals with different backgrounds. Listen to them and learn from their experiences. Also, never be afraid to ask for help!

What do you wish you’d known when you started the process? Everything moves so fast, and there is always something happening here. The project I was assigned during the selection process was not at all what I ended up doing during the internship. I wish I had prepared for every day to be a surprise :D

If you could summarize your experience at Feedzai in just one word, what would it be? Thrive.

Name: Diogo Vilela

Role: Dart Team Intern

Location: Lisbon

Which team did you intern for? What project did you work on at Feedzai? I was part of the Dart team and was given the task of implementing and evaluating RocksDB as a way to store the state of PKernel (Feedzai’s Event Processing Engine).

What was your favorite thing about being a Feedzai intern? There were many good things, but I think my favorite was to learn as much as I did. Every other day I was able to read about a new technology or deepen my knowledge of an already existing one.

What advice would you like to share with current/upcoming Feedzai interns? Make friends right from the beginning. The people here are amazing, and for every problem/question you’ll encounter, there is at least one person that knows the answer for it and will be glad to help you out.

What do you wish you’d known when you started the process? Truth be told? Nothing. The surprises and the adaptation process turned out to be a good way to grow as a person and as a professional.

If you could summarize your experience at Feedzai in just one word, what would it be? Educational.

Name: José Torres

Role: QA Summer Intern

Location: Coimbra

What project did you work on at Feedzai? My project at Feedzai was to merge all resource creators used in QA tests on Feedzai’s main application, PULSE. In the past, these creators were repeated and scattered across different modules.

What was your favorite thing about being a Feedzai intern? My favorite things about being a Feedzai intern were the company’s environment when it comes to learning, the helping spirit of all Feedzaians, and the chance to be useful by executing my project.

What advice would you like to share with current/upcoming Feedzai interns? My advice for the next interns is to come with a desire to learn. You will surely find people available to help you and teach you.

What do you wish you’d known when you started the process? The whole process, from the moment I submitted my application to the first day of work, was always very clear, so I have nothing to point out in regard to this topic.

If you could summarize your experience at Feedzai in just one word, what would it be? Fantastic.

Name: Ricardo Ribeiro Pereira

Role: DS Summer Intern

Location: Porto

Which team did you intern for? What project did you work on at Feedzai? During my internship at Feedzai, I worked with the OpenML team and helped them develop a tool to automatically detect features in datasets that change their behavior over time.

What was your favorite thing about being a Feedzai intern? I felt really welcomed when I arrived, and everyone was super helpful and joyful all the time. Besides the overall work environment, I got to work, discuss and share ideas with very talented people and about really interesting problems.

What advice would you like to share with current/upcoming Feedzai interns? Don’t get upset if you have a hard time in the beginning. With a bit of help and a lot of googling, things will become more natural over time. Tip: keep track of every experiment you do — it might come in handy later!

What do you wish you’d known when you started the process? Working with big data takes time. Be prepared to wait — a lot!

If you could summarize your experience at Feedzai in just one word, what would it be? Fruitful.

In the coming weeks, some of our interns will publish blog posts about the work they have done. These will cover topics such as data science and distributed systems. Stay tuned!

[1]: Very high, defined as ratings of 9/10 and 10/10
[2]: High, defined as ratings of 7/10 and 8/10.