Meet the Interns: August 2019

by Zuora interns: Cami Steppe, Employee Communications, and Sarah Shaffer, Employer Brand Marketing

Summer has flown by and we are already waving goodbye to our interns. Can you believe it? We sure can’t. Zuora interns have continuously been knee deep in valuable projects and have had their opportunity to leave their footprint across the company. Throughout the past few months, they have developed strong connections, accomplished challenging tasks, and have grown both personally and professionally.

It’s been a minute since we last sat down to hear from the interns themselves, but don’t fret, we are back to give you a sneak peek on what they’ve been up to. One thing is for sure… they have proven to be one talented, gritty, and curious group of individuals! Now for the inside scoop…

Ha Nguyen 

Meet ZEO, Ha Nguyen, Computer Science and International Comparative Studies double-major at Duke University, originally from Garden Grove, CA. Ha took the trek up the west coast to our San Mateo HQ to be a part of Zuora as a Software Engineering Intern. 

At Duke, Ha is involved with the Duke Technology Scholars Program (DTech), an organization that strives to inspire a diverse group of undergraduates to pursue a career in engineering. Zuora greatly supports women in technology and has formed a partnership with DTech, ultimately giving Ha the opportunity to thrive in the industry this summer.

Six weeks in and Ha is deep in tangible projects, has formed strong connections with other ZEOs, and continuously makes valuable contributions to Zuora. She’s constantly amazed by the opportunity and freedom Zuora gives our interns to make a large impact through high-level, complex projects.. 

“They want you to be a part of something bigger and work in a real-time setting where you see the good, the bad, the excitement. You get real work that creates an authentic experience. You are given projects that don’t go under the rug.” 

If you swing by Ha’s desk, you will find her leveraging her technical and problem-solving skills to perform intricate tests to improve internal processes to improve efficiency as Zuora continues to grow. In conjunction, she’s is implementing changes to the platform custom objects API, incorporating it in memory and making it more consistent. 

To Ha, Zuora is a special company and stands out from the rest because of their dedication and investment in each intern’s individual growth. 

“One thing that was expressed to me from an early point is to never work in isolation, but to work as a part of a team. Doing software engineering at school, everything is self contained in your own little code base, while here, it is fully team oriented. The team vision. That’s a huge part of the learning experience here.” 

Throughout the summer, Ha has evolved as a person through each experience and encounter at Zuora. Ha is excited to take on her last few weeks here!

Fast Facts about Ha:

  • Ha’s favorite snack in the kitchen? The fresh blueberries and avocados every day (She says she is 25% avocado now)
  • Weird quirk? Fear of germs 
  • 10 years from now… Ha wants to be a mentor to someone, to help pull someone up in whatever company she is a part of 

Pradyumna Kaushik (PK) 

Meet ZEO, Pradyumna Kaushik (PK), a PHD candidate in computer science at Binghampton University, working specifically with power/energy efficient scheduling algorithms. Originally from Bangalore, India, PK joined us this summer as a Software Engineering Intern on our Analytics Team in our San Mateo office. 

PK is owning one project for the whole summer, start to finish. PK was tasked with the challenge to build an Auto Scaler that manages the containers in Amazon Web Services (AWS). In AWS, there are many tasks for data processing, and the analytics team processes that data and extract insights. The data processing flows through stages, and each stage is running tasks. So, PK is building an application that would decide how many instances of those tasks needs to be run based on how much data there is to be processed. PK just finished a single successful deployment of the application, and is now getting into the plumbing of it to actually do the scaling (Go PK!). 

“My goal is to scale one stage by the end of my internship, which ends in 2 weeks. The process is extremely complex, but by scaling one stage I can set the framework to scale the whole process.” 

To PK, Zuora is a company like no other because of the family-feel and startup culture, despite its rapid growth.  

“It is more fun and laid back, but at the same time we still mean business. Being at a smaller company, even for only two and a half months, I know a lot of people at the company. Almost all of the San Mateo office is familiar faces. You don’t feel like you’re in your own bubble.” 

Fast Facts about PK: 

  • PK’s favorite snack in the kitchen? Mango Chobani yogurt with granola 
  • Favorite hobby? Hiking… so much he even created a Zuora hiking channel on slack to connect with other ZEOs and take their shared passion outdoors (as an intern!) 
  • Unique Fact? Talented drummer
  • 10 years from now… PK wants to have fulfilled his longtime dream of running his own company

 

Interested in learning more about Zuora’s career opportunities? Visit our career page to learn more! 

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