Allen Wolf, a Computer Science and Engineering student at the University of Iowa, worked as an intern at John Deere over the summer. He participated on their Network Edge Team, where he learned how to deploy servers and optimize code in the field. He has some reflections on his time at John Deere, and advice for other students looking to pursue an internship.
Allen also participates in the University of Iowa chapter of ACM as webmaster.
What does a typical day at your internship look like? What sort of projects do you have?
My primary project was building and automating a platform that deploys network authentication servers.
Previously, the process to set up a new server was manual. It lasted hours and involved requests, approvals, and configuration. I redesigned this system into an automated pipeline. It uses a variety of optimizations to automatically handle set-up and testing.
These include: Golden base image, which preserves an optimal server-state for easy duplication. Dynamic IP assignment, which efficiently stores network addresses. And Ansible-driven configuration, which allows a user to automate actions.
I also built dashboards for observation, and security patches for our team’s software.
How have your Computer Science skills benefited you?
While working at my internship, the areas of computer science on which I relied the most were writing clean, object-oriented code, understanding computer networking concepts, and working with data structures. These were all directly relevant to my daily work.
I strengthened my skills in networking, virtualization, and observability while working on my projects. All of these skills helped make my projects more efficient. Over the summer, I discovered that I enjoy working with distributed systems. I plan to explore this area further.
Has this experience changed what you would like to do with your degree in the future?
The experience did help shape some areas I’m interested in pursuing. I’m still interested in AI engineering and back-end software development. The internship also gave me an opportunity to discover an interest in systems and infrastructure, especially as they relate to large-scale software systems.
What is your advice to current students on seeking and serving internships?
From my experience, I would recommend going to career fairs and making an effort to network. You should build personal projects around things you find interesting, and practice technical interview problems. Once you have an internship, it’s also important to ask questions, be willing to learn from unfamiliar technology, and take advantage of opportunities to learn from the people around you.