My Summer Internship at Sumo Logic
I spent my summer 2019 as a Backend Software Engineering Intern at Sumo Logic HQ in Redwood City; and in this post, I am sharing my internship experience.
Interview process (for future applicants)
I found Sumo’s interview process to be very efficient and thorough.
My interview rounds were all telephonic. The problems asked during the technical rounds were all new ones, and I had not seen them before on Leetcode or other platforms. This is because Sumo interviewers try to assess your fundamental concepts and problem-solving skills. And hence, my only piece of advice here would be to have a solid grip on foundations.
PS: For resume and interview tips, read my article “Guide to Internship Hunting as an International CS Graduate in the US”.
My journey as a Sumo!
Fast-forwarding to summer 2019 and the start of my 12-week internship at Sumo Logic. I joined the Core Platform team which, in a nutshell, handles all the incoming API calls and security aspect of the gateway to Sumo’s product.
Impactful Projects
Interns are assigned some of the coolest projects at Sumo. The projects are well thought through and feasible to achieve in the duration of an internship. Almost all of my code made it to production by the end of my internship (thanks to their CI pipeline).
A bit about my project. I built a JWT based single sign-on feature which enables users to seamlessly switch across multiple accounts. Here is my blog post explaining its high-level design. While working on this, I also found a UX bug in AWS Secrets Manager and wrote this blog post about it.
Breaking “master”!
Sumo embraces a culture of “Move fast and break things”. I personally love this culture as it accelerates the learning process.
Like any other developer, I also checked in code which broke a couple of integration tests. I mentioned this during the stand-up, and my manager responded, “Now you have become a true Sumo.” :P
The takeaway here is if you love learning new technologies, experimentation, and breaking stuff as you move — Sumo can be the place for you.
It’s not just the work
Free Food and Beer… Wait, what?
Sumo has a dog-friendly office, with a lot of free food, snacks, and yes, you heard me right, beer all around. ;)
Events, Events, Events…
During my internship, there were a lot of networking events. The best of them was the Lunch & Learns series with the members of the leadership team. I got to meet, connect and learn from many other Sumos with diverse backgrounds and experiences.
Apart from this, there were various other intern events like Bubble Soccer, Fort Battle, Game nights, etc. The office also had arcade games and my team made me learn a lot of “Killer Queen” by the end of my internship. ;)
Wrapping it up!
At its established startup stage and ~200 (and growing) people-strong engineering team at the HQ, Sumo was the kind of company I wanted to be a part of.
I loved the fact that my internship was exciting, challenging, and most of all memorable. I would like to thank my manager Ramin Safaie, my mentors Prashant Trivedi and Garrett Nano, and the internship program coordinators Kat Creamer and David Blondeau for this amazing and wonderful experience.
Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn if you want to know more about my experience or in general about internship applications, resume and interview preparation tips. Please do add a note with your connection request. :)
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