Redbubble took a different approach to its technical intern program this year
Through this multi-part series you will meet our interns, explore their journey at Redbubble and connect with the people who made their experiences one to remember. Be sure to subscribe to our Medium profile to stay up to date with all the latest in our 2018–2019 Intern program.
It happens to be the third year running our summer intern program in Melbourne. This time around we made a conscious and bold decision to deepen partnerships with a non-traditional educational institution and a new community partnership. Our aim was to leverage this opportunity to put our hand on the scale to prioritise equity in tech and to be part of the future. Creating balanced teams is of top priority. Further exploring our new national partnership with Code Like a Girl was a natural next step.
Using the same selection criteria as year’s past while modifying our sourcing practices and elements of our candidate experience, we got to meet talent that blew us away. It was no big surprise, but still…we’re so grateful to all of the candidates who submitted interest. After a tough round of decisions, we were lucky enough to welcome five software engineering interns, one product design intern, and one UX esearch intern into our 12-week program. (This was the first year ever our Design team welcomed folks for the Summer!)
While those first few days may have been a blur of names, faces and acronyms, everyone has now settled in and has already made impact. Our intern program is now more than halfway done, so we thought it was about darned time you met this wonderful group of humans. Drum roll please………
First up is Adeline Tay. Adeline joins the UX Research team following her studies at General Assembly. Affectionately referred to as a ‘recovering academic’, she comes to the world of UX with a background in Human Geography and a curiosity for technology and trends. Her time with Redbubble has so far included a deep dive into all things user-testing and and she has immediately become an integral contributor of this small but mighty group of Bubblers.
Adeline says “Everyone was so kind and approachable [when we first started]. The way the ‘one team’ ethos appears to play out on the ground is quite amazing to experience.”
Genie (Eugenia) Kalintseva is currently completing her studies at Monash University. She has a knack for front end software development and is working with our iOS mobile team to continue to improve the RB app experience for our 300k+monthly users. (Download our new app here.) She’s already achieved her ultimate goal for the internship; impacting real code, working on live projects and rolling out things that will go on affect thousands of end users.
Genie says, “I enjoy exploring the boundaries between technology and art, and how they can enhance each other.” We think makes Redbubble the perfect fit.
Georgie (Georgina) Tippett began her career in the fashion and media world. After one trip to New York and a life changing art exhibition, she sought advice from her brothers (both programmers), took one courageous step after another and signed up to study web-based technologies.
Flash forward to today and Georgie has brought her creative flair to our engineering team and has jumped right in…from daily stand ups, pull requests and hours on end of pair-programming with other devs.
Georgie says, “I think the most important thing this internship has taught me so far is that I made the right decision to change the path of my career into software development. It is very reassuring and inspiring to know that there are companies like Redbubble where I can explore my new passion for technology”.
Next up is Kaitlyn Mesa! Working with in our Delivery Engineering team (the team that keeps all of our other devs happy). Kaitlyn is furthering her experience in agile teams and exploring her fascination with cybersecurity.
She admits her time with us is providing the perfect exposure to new systems, tools, working styles, team structures and rituals.
Kaitlyn says, “The overload of information that first week had my brain fried, but nowadays I’m taking it all as learning opportunities.”
And then came Max. Max Honner made the shift from graphic design to UX and is leveraging his time with us to deepen his understanding of people; the what and why of human behaviours as considered through design. Making significant impact already working with the mobile team, Max has also taken advantage of the flexible structure and worked with his manager to curate a program specific to his strengths and interests.
Max says, “The most unexpected thing about being a UX intern at Redbubble is definitely the freedom to ‘choose my own adventure’. This allows me to not only work and learn as a member of the team, but to be exposed to as many aspects of the business as possible.”
Meet Medha. Recent Computer Science graduate Medha Rijal joins our artist engineering user group. Since starting the program she has tackled new tools and contributed to front-end engineering work that will go on to benefit 400k+ artists on Redbubble. What else is to come? By the end of the 12 weeks Medha will have developed front-end components that are used on redbubble.com!
When asked what the most unexpected thing about this program was, Medha said, “Your thoughts and ideas matter. Everyone wants to know what you think and it feels like everyone’s voice is heard and included”.
And rounding out our class of 2018–19 is Tia.
Tia Lowenthal, is a part of our product API team and has quickly taken to some exciting challenges like a duck into water. Early on she has seen the overlap between her passions — art and technology — and our intern program has been the perfect place to explore these possibilities.
She aims to build her confidence in learning new skills and has already conquered the initial influx of new processes, languages and a lot of people’s names.
Tia says “I am loving the work! It isn’t just “an intern project” that gets forgotten about as soon as the internship is finished. It’s real day-to-day work that everyone else is doing. It makes me feel like a valued member of the team.”
Well, folks…there they are. Our phenomenal 2018–19 cohort of summer interns in Melbourne. And they sure have achieved a lot already!
Stay tuned for more in this series, where we will explore insights from our team of dedicated mentors, thoughts from our partners and plans for the future. Also, we’re excited to welcome to engineering interns in San Francisco in the next few months. More to come in June!
If you are interested in being a part of our 2019–20 internship program, watch out for our application process to come out in the coming months. Follow us on LinkedIn and Medium for the latest!
