I had the opportunity to write about my internship experience for the FIDtern blog and share it with the team on my last day. Thanks to Enterprise Marketing team for the opportunity and hope to see it published on Fidelity careers site soon!

I had an incredible summer internship at Fidelity Investments as a Software Engineer Intern in the Merrimack, New Hampshire office. Throughout the 10-week program, I had the opportunity to learn from exceptional engineers and contribute to building the core services impacting the brokerage platform and internal applications.

As I flew in from California the weekend prior to the start, I found myself in a completely new environment ahead of the internship. I was both excited and nervous about living in a new city, meeting new people, and the uncertainties around what to expect in the program. Thankfully, the orientation sessions in the first week quickly set a welcoming tone for everyone, and I was soon greeted by my team, with whom I grew close over the coming weeks.

I was placed in the MOB Squad under the Core Brokerage Platform Technology (CBPT) business group, a team responsible for modernizing brokerage systems by rewriting account balance services with new technologies. Under the agile scrum management, I was assigned user stories each sprint. I appreciated getting the chance to work on core applications with real business values, and enjoyed seeing how they progressed over several sprints, including live production installs.

Working in a corporate environment provided me with invaluable insights into what it takes to build industry-standard software, which are hard to attain through a theoretical college curriculum. I learned about the aspects of scalability and availability that are critical when shipping client-facing software, and the thorough testing procedures conducted at multiple levels to ensure these standards. I was involved with conducting performance and chaos testing, then collecting the resulting metrics that would ultimately impact business decisions. Furthermore, I saw how essential cross-team collaboration is, to understanding and delivering business demands. Contrary to my assumptions that an engineer only focuses on technical implementations, I saw extensive analysis work being done on understanding the business logic itself and many higher-level discussions taking place about industry rules & regulations. My favorite moment was probably the “ShipIt” day, a day in which teams collectively worked on a single update – Being physically present with the rest of the team in a designated room for the entire workday allowed for a productive, collaborative session which I really enjoyed.

Beyond the technical skills I gained, my internship at Fidelity was meaningful in many other ways. I connected with over 40 associates and got to hear about their individual journeys and career guidance they had for me. I attended and enjoyed intern events hosted by the University Talent team, as well as domain-wide events like the Olympics. These events helped me build lasting friendships with fellow interns, and professional relationships with my team and my manager. And of course, I got to learn about the operations and culture at Fidelity. When I visited and worked at the Boston headquarters for a day, I toured different units like Fidelity Labs and Fidelity Crypto, witnessing where industry-leading innovations take place and seeing the firm’s extensive reach into various financial domains.

This summer has been significant in both confirming my career interests and allowing me to explore new ones. I was given the opportunity to problem-solve in a wide range of areas and work on services that would impact real-world clients – an experience any Computer Science student can appreciate. I was amazed by the collaborative culture and the impressive talent at Fidelity, and I could not have asked for a better internship experience in my early career. I will surely cherish the memories of being a FIDtern in the Summer of 2024.