In February 2020 we announced the kickoff of our first Iasi Summer Internship program dedicated to the best students in search of a great learning opportunity. After countless interviews and discussions with great candidates, the first edition of the program began on 6th of July 2020.12 interns participated - four in the Ecosystem team and eight in the Banking Engine team.
The internship was available to students who completed at least two years of full-time study towards the completion of their degrees from one of the Faculties: Computer Science, Automatics and Computer Engineering and Mathematics - Informatics.
Given the shift to working remotely due to COVID-19, we knew that we will need to adjust the internships to meet the new reality while still offering an engaging, meaningful internship experience.
We took the opportunity to revise the approach and introduced a completely virtual program. To ensure that every intern felt welcomed, included, supported, and challenged we diversified the experience and included one day of bootcamp, 1:1 pairing sessions, a virtual training, the ShipIT hackathon, virtual social events and internal guides for self-onboarding.
The teams had the freedom to organise their own programs and here is how they did it:
Ecosystem team
- Soft skills: 1 week
- ShipIT hackathon: 1 week
- Hard skills training: 5 weeks
- Hands-on project work in the team: 5 weeks
Banking Engine team
- ShipIT hackathon: 1 week
- Technical skills training: 6 weeks
- Hands-on project work in the team: 5 weeks
After our virtual internship ended we asked our interns what life as a remote intern was like, what they learned, and their advice for future interns. Meet Ana Vasiliu, Andra Gîştescu, Marian Creţu, Paul Senciuc and Iulica Enăchescu:
What surprised you the most about working at Mambu?
“Many things did and my first few weeks here were a blast! It’s a tough choice, but I think I’ll choose all the work that was put into our onboarding - the Mambu bootcamp, the fact that everything was planned from the start, the quality of the internal resources we got to learn from, all the time that was put into the trainings… we even had a few days dedicated to developing our soft skills! Even though the internship was remote, I never felt lonely during those times, as I was always seeing and interacting with my colleagues.” - Ana Vasiliu, Integration Engineer Intern
How did you develop personally and professionally throughout the internship?
“I can say that I definitely developed more confidence during my internship. An important part of a successful experience is communication and the challenges that popped up were mainly solved by looking at those issues from multiple viewpoints and by cooperating with my colleagues. Professionally, I gained a better understanding of what fintech is, I got to go deeper into Java programming and evolve my critical thinking.“ - Andra Gîștescu, Software Engineer Intern
What did you learn?
“As a member of the Ecosystem team, I started to work in an agile team, on a real software product. I learned to code on a low code platform and use additional tools. Throughout my time at Mambu I have understood how to ensure fast delivery of a product and how a low code platform improves software development. My internship at Mambu has given me the chance to experience daily life in a multicultural company which cherishes each of its members and keeps an entrepreneurial perspective. I was involved in the ShipIT event, and I really loved it since it allowed me to be part of a new Mambu team and deeply understand the software development life cycle.” - Iulica Enăchescu - Integration Engineer Intern
What helped you to prepare for success during the internship and what are you most proud of achieving?
“Definitely code reviews, they were valuable feedback and helped me sharpen my skills for writing code and software engineering.“ - Paul Senciuc, Software Engineer Intern
Describe in a few words one day as a Mambu intern
“Basically, a day as an intern consists of ownership, teamwork, knowledge sharing and a constant learning process.” - Andra Gîștescu, Software Engineer Intern
How was the interaction between interns and mentors?
“At Mambu I met really professional mentors. I learned a lot from their experiences, from software engineering and unit testing, to databases and concurrency. To me, these people are superheroes, ready to help whenever you need it! I also had the honor to work with professional developers during the ShipIT hackathon.” - Marian Creţu, Software Engineer Intern
Do you have any advice for future interns?
“Take initiative, learn as much as you can, solve tasks, and ask questions. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. “ - Paul Senciuc, Software Engineer Intern
Starting March 2021 we will begin looking for new interns, in the meantime, explore our open positions.