0-60 in ten weeks at CustomInk’s eCommerce Technology Department

Going from 0 to 60 miles per hour in ten weeks is impossibly slow for any sports car, but for a summer internship - starting as a novice developer just learning the ropes of CustomInk Tech, to ending the summer developing alongside full-time engineers has been a fast and exciting ride.

At CustomInk, the bar is set extremely high for being a developer in the eCommerce Technology department as well as being a resourceful mentor. Most of what has made my summer both productive, efficient, and awesome was the willingness of the full-time engineers to help me get up to speed on working with real world problems that CustomInk Tech solves each day. From my first day at the office, I felt a sense that I wasn’t "just an intern” but that the people on CustomInk’s eCommerce Tech team cared that I was there for the summer, recognized I could help benefit the team, and helped enable me to do so.

From working alongside UX designers, learning important DevOps practices, taking care of routine site maintenance, strategizing for large data migrations, refactoring sections of an extensive test suite, developing the code behind new business initiatives, and continually learning and testing my development knowledge and practices are just a few facets of CustomInk Tech I had the privilege to experience over the course of my 10 weeks here.

To any upperclass college students looking for a summer internship or early career position in a fast-paced and collaborative software engineering environment, I highly recommend researching and applying for the opportunities with CustomInk’s eCommerce Technology department. Some important skills and familiar tools to have would include; a growing proficiency in Ruby, JavaScript, and Git, experience with the development of a Rails application, work well in a collaborative environment, understanding proper data modeling practices and techniques, being good friends with the command line, and being able to communicate and understand complex and sometime novel technical problems and ideas with fellow engineers and non-engineers.

Overall, I could not have asked for a more challenging, educating, and enjoyable summer internship experience. I feel that this experience has left me well prepared for the next steps of my career after my senior year at Carnegie Mellon. A huge thanks to everyone on the team who has made this an amazing summer!