Lessons from my software engineer internship at Kensho

Software engineer intern Danielle Lesinski reflects on her summer at Kensho: the projects she tackled, the skills she built, and the lessons that stuck.

A year ago, I didn’t know what exactly software engineering was. It seemed like a friend’s vague job that I avoided asking about for fear of looking stupid; however, it was the most common career for new graduates in my field, so I knew it was worth looking into sooner rather than later. Given that I was approaching the most significant recruiting season in my career so far as a Senior at Vanderbilt University, I needed to decide what I wanted to do with my life (for the foreseeable future, at least).

I’ve always wanted to lead, but I didn’t know the best way to get there. I spoke to a few people in the industry and most of the explanations of software engineering went over my head, with big terms like “backend,” “database management,” and “framework,” confusing the actual meaning of the job. I knew, however, that choosing an internship in software engineering would give me the necessary tools to build a career in tech.

I attended the Grace Hopper conference in September and met amazing women who had established themselves in the technology industry, along with those who, like me, were starting out. For those who aren’t familiar, the Grace Hopper conference is a yearly conference for women in technology. There are fascinating lectures by stand-out women in various tech fields, and lots of social events. Companies also attend Grace Hopper, and it’s a great opportunity for recruitment.

While the camaraderie created from thousands of women sharing a passion was empowering, I quickly felt snowed under. Everyone seemed to be lightyears ahead of me — they all had previous experience, so they knew what APIs were and how to use them. They all knew exactly what internship they wanted and how to get it. Easily eclipsed by these accomplished, driven women, I felt inferior.

Enter Kensho — a company that didn’t ask me “front-end or back-end?” when I entered their booth. The Kensho team didn’t force me into a box that could very well determine the trajectory of my career; instead, they asked me about my goals and aspirations, and demonstrated how those goals would be fostered in a software engineering role at a company like Kensho. Fast forward to Summer of 2023. I was excited to be a software engineer intern at Kensho. I was starting to get a feel for Kensho’s culture — one that sent you your favorite candies AND a pretty cute toy for your dog (see below). I couldn’t wait to get started.

My first week was challenging, to say the least. I’ve been successful in all of my courses, solved hundreds of Leetcode problems, and served as a TA for upper-level Computer Science courses, but nothing prepared me for what it’s like to work with an actual, live codebase. Sure, I had used GitHub in school for submitting assignments; but I had never branched and merged into a codebase that was actively hosting several (very important and very costly) applications. Terms were thrown around in meetings that I couldn’t comprehend — clusters, containers, deploying to production. Staging, brokers, authentication.

Following a piece of advice from a teammate, I wrote unfamiliar terms down as soon as I heard them. Whenever I had a few free minutes, I’d research the terms so that the next time they popped up in our meetings, I’d have a chance at understanding. Slowly but surely, I became more comfortable in my role. I began to understand the structure of Kensho’s libraries and how to effectively improve them. I felt confident in discussing my work with teammates. I was less afraid of asking questions for fear of looking dumb; I realized that while many had more knowledge than me, pretty much everyone in this organization — and in this field, for that matter — is still learning. So while a question might feel dumb to me, it might push a coworker to look at the problem in a different light.

I quickly came to realize that learning was not something that just interns were expected to do — it was integral to Kensho’s culture. Kensho actively promotes their employees to learn, with monthly “Lightning Talks” where employees teach their fellow team members about various topics, ranging from technical subjects like Kubernetes clusters to literally everything else (Taylor Swift, Japanese advertisements, and snowboarding styles, to name a few). Once a month, an entire day is set aside for employees to learn about whatever they please. Even during our regular day-to-day work, questions and their respective discussions flowed throughout Kensho’s many Slack channels. My teammates were always ready to help me out, and once I became comfortable, I tried to help them out too. I even gave a Lightning Talk myself! I embraced what I didn’t know, because I would learn from it.

A few key contributions I made at Kensho were creating the kube-events-log-router and kensho-watcher library. The kube-events-log-router routes Kubernetes events to Opensearch, so we can easily search through them. I created the kensho-watcher library from scratch, and it helps programmers watch Kubernetes events while reducing exceptions. Both of these projects allowed me to build working code from scratch using new technologies that I learned while at Kensho (Kubernetes, Opensearch, etc.).

While the level of technicality in my role initially intimidated me, I was able to overcome it with the help of Ray, my mentor, and my many other teammates. While there was always some concept that I wouldn’t understand, I realized that was a pillar of the industry. Technology will be forever changing; there will always be something new to learn. Software engineering wasn’t about mastering every concept and technology, or writing flawless code. It was about being open and willing to learn, and leaning on your team when you hit a wall. Without a willingness to collaborate with others, success in this industry is not possible. And thankfully, Kensho provides the perfect environment for a software engineer just starting their career to succeed.