TRADE DESK (THE

software that museums use; I gained an insight into collections management, curatorial, and

conservation roles and I learnt a lot of art history along the way.

In terms of my future career ambitions, interning in a museum, especially an old one

immersed in tradition, has confirmed for me that working in a modern institution, more

focused on current artists, is what I am really interested in. The access I had during my time

at the Ashmolean to all parts of museum life has also shown me that a collections

management role could be, for me, as exciting as a curatorial or educational one.

Alfred Bullus, Brasenose College, Final year undergraduate, MMath Mathematics, Remote working

Work Projects

The Trade Desk runs a platform that buys

advertisements programmatically on behalf of client

companies. I worked as a Software Engineer in the

Data Processing team. The platform the company

runs operates at very high scale and throughput, and so there are large numbers of logs that

need to be processed. The team that I was a part of maintains the system that does this. For

the 12 week internship I was given a project to investigate and demonstrate a new way of

running the system that processes the logs. This involved a collection of modern

technologies, such as Docker a container creation system, Kubernetes a container

orchestration system, and Apache Airflow a task scheduling system. I mainly spent the first

three weeks getting myself set up and learning about the technologies I would be using.

Then I had to familiarise myself with the problems of the current approach and the

company’s codebase. Finally, I had to work on my demonstration, and at the end of the internship I gave a presentation on the work I had done. My main support throughout the

internship came from my mentor, but the other people on the team (which was split

between the UK and US) were always happy to help.

Daily Life

My internship was remote throughout. The office opened up in my last week. My day

normally began with a short call with my mentor. Then I had the day to get on with my

work. Usually, I would be working by myself, as I was working on my own project. Each day

would be interspersed with calls, for instance

with my supervisor or talking through

progress with the other interns. There was

usually a call with the team I was on at the

end of the day (as some of the team

members were based in California). Each day

meeting had a different focus, for instance

discussing future proposals, or the current issues with the running system. Working from

home could be a little tiring at times, but it did also mean that the workday was

substantially shorter as I didn’t have to commute. It would be nice to visit the office at some point in the future.

Lasting Impressions

I enjoyed my internship. It was really exciting getting to use new technologies and work in

the real codebase of such a large company, and to be trusted to do work that would have an

impact on the company and its future. I learnt a lot about the culture of the company and

working for a large company in general. I also learnt a huge amount of new skills, such as

using new technologies and programming languages, as well as soft skills. I gave

presentations and demonstrations to both my team and the wider forum of London

developers. The internship has helped firm up my career options and confirm that this is the

industry in which I want to work.