Purva is one of the runner-ups of Summer 2016’s #UMBCintern contest! To see Purva’s entries and all of the other wonderful submissions, checkout the hashtag on Twitter. 

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Name: Purva Kulkarni

Internship, Co-op or Research Site: NASA - Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Position Title: Operations System Analyst Intern

Major(s)/Minor(s): Computer Science Master’s 

Expected Graduation Year: May 2017

Briefly describe your internship, co-op,  or research opportunity, including your day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and assignments.

I worked on a project called 'Evaluating Documentation Needs for DevOps / Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Projects at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. My day to day work included interviewing people from Software Development, Operations and Project Management teams. Understanding their requirements, pain points and expectations from documents and documentation process, researching which other organizations have successful SRE teams and how they handle their documents, reading and learning from the book “Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems.” I also participated in Software Development Boot-camp, Mini-Hackathon (coding for Amazon Alexa/Echo), talks/presentations on various topics, and various events arranged for Summer Interns at JPL and at California Institute of Technology (CalTech).

Describe the process of obtaining your internship, research, or co-op opportunity.

I applied for this internship via Indeed.com. There were two interviews via telephone (first interview by hiring manager and second by HR). 

What have you enjoyed the most about your position or organization/company?

For me, interning at Jet Propulsion Laboratory was like a dream come true. I enjoyed each and every day of work. JPL is a wonderful workplace to build collaboration with brilliant researchers through a lot of seminars in different fields and resources for training.

How do you believe you have made an impact through your work?

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Office of Chief Information Officer (JPL OCIO) is starting Site Reliability Engineering projects and they wanted to evaluate each and every aspect of SRE before kick-starting the projects. My project was focused on documentation part of SRE projects. I completed my project within given deadline. As per my mentor, findings, analysis and recommendations mentioned in my paper will definitely guide SRE project management team while designing, creating, sharing and curating the documents. It will also help in streamlining the documentation process.

What advice would you give to another student who is seeking an internship or similar experience?

NASA - JPL have year-round internship opportunities available. They are keen on hiring the curious minds. If you are really interested in working at NASA - JPL, keep visiting their websites and applying for the internship positions you are interested in. 

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