Name: Ryan Paredes
Hometown: New York
Where did you intern? What did you do there?
Assurant, Inc. I joined as the inaugural member of the Talent Development Pipeline working in the DevSecOps organization. There, I got to continue applying my classroom knowledge towards large scale, enterprise automation efforts. I’ve been working in an Agile Scrum fashion to automate the network, server, and SQL components. I’ve also analyzed data to determine the effectiveness of implemented solutions and even had a chance to help mentor incoming interns and speak to prospective candidates as well.
How did you get your internship?
I was taking CTS4408 – Database Administration, and in addition to doing well in that class, I also made sure to complete all the extra credit assignments. The professor of that class was Norbert Monfort, who passed my information on to Robert Fortunato, who was in the process of starting up the Talent Development Program.
What advice do you have for those beginning the internship process?
Don’t stress too much about finding the perfect first internship. You’ll have a long career ahead of you, so get as much experience as you can while you find what your passion and focus should be.
SAVE THE DATE: Assurant Day
– 10:30 AM Meet & Greet at the CASE Breezeway
– 12:30 PM Info Session and Panel with Pizza
What projects did you work on?
Network Automation, IT Service Management, and Reliability projects mostly.
What is your major?
I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology – Software.
How did your internship connect back to your coursework?
All the fundamentals I learned helped me understand the underlying technologies, protocols, and infrastructure actually used in enterprise setups.
What was the coolest thing about your internship or that happened during your internship?
Being able to assist and contribute to projects where senior level engineers are also involved. It feels good to be able to hold your own(even if only in a few areas) with seasoned veterans when it comes to different technologies.
What did you like most about your experience?
Assurant provided a great atmosphere conducive to learning. I was both developing solutions and learning a great deal at the same time.
What did you learn about yourself?
I learned that I actually enjoyed the development and programming of somewhat complex solutions. Up to starting at Assurant, I was focused mostly on the IT side of things(System/Database Administration, Simple scripting, etc), but I got a chance to begin working with larger codebases.
How did the position increase your professional confidence?
Getting more involved with larger codebases, repos, Git, etc, increased my confidence in the development side of IT.
How did you expand your professional network?
Meeting with great mentors, senior engineers, and potential candidates proved to really increase my professional network.
How did it help you prove yourself in the “real-world?”
Seeing the results of my work provide value to the business is a highlight of my time here.