Conor Finlay – Life as a Summer Intern 2024 in the Back-end Core Components team

Hi! My name is Conor and I’m a Computer Engineering student at Trinity College Dublin. I’ve just finished an Erasmus exchange year at KU Leuven, where I specialized in Artificial Intelligence, and now I’m returning to Ireland to complete my Master’s year. Outside of my studies, I have a love of theatre and music and I’ve been very involved in my university’s musical theatre society throughout my studies (to the occasional dismay of my professors 😬).

Why did you choose to do a summer internship at Twipe?

I was actively looking for a summer internship when I came across this opportunity at Twipe. I had completed one internship before and really wanted my next one to give me the opportunity to work on a real product with real impact. Twipe certainly fits this description. Twipe provides crucial infrastructure to newspaper companies all over Europe and beyond, and its platform delivers news to over a million users every day. It was clear to me that this internship would be a unique opportunity to gain exposure to high-impact software development, and so I decided to pursue it.

Which projects did you work on and what stood out?

This summer I joined the “Backend Core Components” team which is working on upgrading the API for Twipe’s mobile apps. During my internship I focused on expanding the team’s end-to-end testing of their endpoints and, in particular, expanding their testing to also validate the correctness of the logs produced during the execution of these endpoints. This posed some interesting challenges, especially when it came to the log validation, which required some creativity to come up with a viable solution. I was pleased with this focus area, as it allowed me to contribute work that was genuinely valuable to the team, while also avoiding any risk of disrupting important functionality within their application.

I was nervous about being a mentor, but Conor’s friendliness made it easier. He quickly fit in and soon made impressive progress on his tasks.

Kevin Vandeneede

Junior Back-end Developer, Twipe

How did you find the vibe at Twipe?

The vibe at Twipe is so, so great. From the get-go, I felt that my team was excited to have me on board and that they genuinely wanted me to succeed. I was paired with a buddy, Kevin, who always made sure to be available to help me with any issues I encountered, and I was always encouraged by the team at large to actively participate in meetings and discussions about their work. However, it was the overall company atmosphere that really stood out to me. Everyone at Twipe takes their work seriously and is very good at what they do, but they also make sure to enjoy themselves and share a laugh with one another. Whether it was during lunch or at one of the after-work events, I always had a great time getting to know all the brilliant Twipees.

What is the key thing you learned during your internship?

The key thing I learned during my internship is the importance of processes within a well-functioning engineering team. From the beginning, I took note of how deliberate my team were in communicating with one another – always making clear what they needed from others, whether they thought they were on track with their work, whether they foresaw any potential upcoming issues, and so on. Every two weeks, during “Sparkling Friday”, we held a sprint retrospective where all members of the team were encouraged to highlight what went well and what didn’t over the previous two weeks. These meetings were very interesting for me, and they left me with a strong appreciation for how crucial good, deliberate processes are in building great things as a team.

The key takeaway from my internship was the importance of clear processes. My team communicated deliberately, always clarifying needs, progress, and issues.

Conor Finlay

Summer Intern 2024, Twipe

Would you recommend Twipe to future interns?

Absolutely. Working at Twipe has given me everything I hoped for in terms of professional experience, and even more than I expected in terms of sociability and, quite simply, fun. I’ve had an incredible time this summer, learned a great deal, and met some amazing people. I wholeheartedly recommend an internship at Twipe to anyone considering it!

Meet Conor’s class of 2024

Interested in joining Twipe as an intern?