My Internship Experience at KBRA 2022

November 25th, 2022, marked the end of my three-month internship experience at Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA). I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to be a Data Management intern at KBRA, and I can confidently say I gained invaluable knowledge and skills from working with a fantastic engineering team. This program opened the doors for me to break into a career in information technology (IT) and data engineering, and so I will always hold this experience very dear to my heart.?

When I joined the internship program, I was very overwhelmed as this was my first experience in the data engineering world. Everything was new to me, and I could’ve easily gotten lost if it hadn’t been for my wonderful mentor, Sol Courtney . Thank you for being patient with me every step of the way as I learned everything from the basics of Python to building machine learning models, testing code, and so on. I was fortunate to have someone so accomplished and experienced, believe in me, encourage me, and teach me what I needed to grow and get closer to achieving my career aspirations.?

During my internship experience, I set out to learn as much as I could from the brilliant minds of the data engineers I worked with. In order to do this, I started taking notes during the daily morning calls, intern meetings, or team scrum meetings, especially when they brought up topics or notions I was unfamiliar with. I documented and collected over three hundred data science, data engineering, and machine learning concepts and terms (both technical and foundational), which I was able to share with all of the other interns. This was tremendously helpful as I learned essential vocabulary that is commonly used to communicate between software engineers, data scientists, and data engineers today.?

One of my biggest takeaways from this internship was learning the foundations of Python, as this is the programming language that is dominantly used in the career path I intend to pursue. One of the best things about the data internship program at KBRA is that it helps new interns learn Python with weekly Python classes taught by its own talented engineers. I want to thank Sol Courtney , Rahul D. Ghosal , and Daniel Dubé for taking the time to teach these classes.?

As a data management intern, I also had the pleasure of working with other amazing interns and engineers who made this experience even more enjoyable. Thank you to my fellow interns, Dymphna Nguyen , Annie Renita , and Maybelle Z. for working with me passionately on various projects throughout the 12-weeks. Also, thank you to Tyler Thomas for making my onboarding experience smooth and efficient. Furthermore, thank you Ian van der Molen for including me in his team’s project. The supportive environment at KBRA allowed me to persevere and keep working hard throughout this arduous journey.

As the school semester wraps up and this internship comes to an end, I am proud of myself for successfully making it through such a busy time in my life. I learned the importance of time management, as staying motivated while working and doing school full-time is a challenging task. There were many days when I felt like I did not have enough time for everything I needed to get done, but I persisted and continued to work hard, day in and day out. I learned a lot about myself during this critical period, including the fact that I am resilient because I never gave up or lost sight of my dream of becoming an engineer. As stressful as this journey was, my team supported me greatly, and it was so beyond worth it for the amount of knowledge and skills I learned. A big thank you to the Data Management team at KBRA for having me!

#UTDBSITS #JSOMINTERN #JSOM