Data Science Internship at Pitney Bowes: From High School Teacher to Data Engineer

In looking to transition my career from being a digital marketing specialist (and immediately before that, a high school teacher) to a Data Engineering professional, I went back to graduate school remotely during the pandemic. However, graduate school alone was not enough to prepare me for job interviews and for the more challenging kind of problem solving that occurs in the workplace (but that is difficult to replicate in the classroom). A significant part of my career transition needed to be gaining real-world work experience in Data Science, and I was lucky to have the opportunity to spend the spring and summer of 2021 interning at Pitney Bowes as part of their Data Science team.

In my internship, I gained exposure and familiarity with cutting edge tools and technologies for working on Data Science problems: big data warehouses like Snowflake, Python tools like Pandas, Numpy, and Plotly, machine learning modeling tools like LightGBM, and time series modeling libraries like Facebook Prophet. Additionally, I learned industry-leading processes for working through Data Science problems, including the CRISM-DM life cycle. I learned to prepare and present my work effectively in order to communicate with business stakeholders about insights I was able to identify in my work. I also gained an understanding of real-world Data Science use cases and challenges, something that cannot be gained through a university program--it can only be learned through actual work experience.

Lastly, this internship included a component focused on helping me improve my ability to navigate the business world and reflect intentionally on my own career path and personal story. I credit my internship at Pitney Bowes with helping me be prepared for interviews and future work experiences alike, and I believe what I learned at Pitney Bowes was invaluable in helping me secure a permanent full-time position in my field after graduation.

David Freitag is a graduate of Baruch College with an MS in Information Systems. He is currently a Data Engineer at American Family Insurance.