When I first arrived at the Redwood City office and began onboarding, I had no idea what was in store for me throughout the internship. The office was just opening back up and working in the office again was extremely exciting. I came in expecting to work on only one team but ended up being able to work with two! Entering as a Forward Deployed Engineering Intern, my project was on the Applications Engineering team. Having this cross-team functionality as an intern opened my mind to the vast opportunities available in the company, as well as just how many integral parts come together in building the products that C3 AI has in store.
Every day in the office was a whirlwind of excitement, collaboration, and the willingness to solve difficult problems. From the very start, the intern project I worked on had immense value for the future of the company. Instead of pushing off just any old, backlogged project to the interns, the engineering teams made it their priority to give the interns a project that they could challenge themselves on, as well as make a serious impact in just 12 weeks. We were tasked with building out a completely new product into C3 AI’s line of base applications. The product had serious customer interest, and in a matter of weeks after our internship, a customer roll out is expected. The idea of an intern having the opportunity to build, deploy, and ship a real product to customers was an unrivaled experience for me and I could not have learned more.
In addition to the projects, the people at C3 AI are a one-of-a-kind people that I have not found anywhere else. Each intern is assigned a mentor that assists them in the process of learning about the company, meeting new people, and tackling the difficult problems assigned to them. My mentor was incredibly valuable throughout the entirety of the internship. He was always there whenever I needed any help, whether it was getting in touch with a member from another team, guiding me in solving a challenging problem, or just giving general life advice and chatting about our days. Alongside my mentor, each person I met at C3 AI was incredibly brilliant in their own way, contributing to a diverse and talented crowd of individuals. Any time there was a solution to be designed, the room was flooded with interesting and valuable discussion. It was an eye-opening experience to be involved in collaboration with such people and in such conversations.
Lastly, being an intern at C3 AI never really felt like I was an intern in the classical sense. I was treated as if I was a full-time employee, given all the same responsibilities and treated with the same respect. For the intern project, we had a dedicated Product Manager, as well as QA team, all as available resources for the duration of our summer. This added a feeling of depth to my time at C3 AI and exposed me to even more of the fantastic people here and how the numerous teams outside of the two that I worked in interact and overlap. The inter and cross disciplinary work being done at C3 AI is truly fantastic, especially when everyone can have and hold high level conversations on endlessly deeps concepts about AI and how it works in Enterprise level of scale.
Overall, my summer at C3 AI was everything I could have asked for and more. I had the chance to design, build, and ship a product that I had significantly contributed to, as well as grow from the learning experience of a lifetime.
