Summer at Yugabyte: My Intern Experience
August 31, 2022
I’m Basava Kolagani, a first-year Masters student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During the summer, I worked at Yugabyte as an intern on the Distributed Storage and Transactions team. Since I am interested in distributed systems and was looking for industry experience in this area, Yugabyte was a great fit.
My Experience During the Application Process
I contacted a UW-Madison alumn at Yugabyte, asking for a referral. I then spoke with a recruiter and was able to land an interview. The process consisted of two rounds of Data Structures and Algorithms, one of which was more open-ended and conversational. The entire interview process was seamless and super fast; I received an offer within 10 days when the recruiter initially reached out to me.
My Internship Experience Over 13 Weeks at Yugabyte
Yugabyte has developed a PostgreSQL-compatible, distributed SQL database that is highly scalable, performant, and reliable.
From my first week, I was amazed by the quality of the code. The common functionalities were well abstracted out so that anyone new to the organization—like me—could reuse them effortlessly.
During my internship, I was able to work on two tasks that were central to enhancing the performance of YugabyteDB. My first task dealt with persisting Raft log entries asynchronously in the background, as opposed to doing it inline with the critical write path. This contributed to a reduction in p99 latency spikes. My second task focused on expediting the bootstrapping of a new node so it could fetch required data from the closest follower node versus having to contact the leader node.
From day 1, I collaborated closely with both my manager, Raghavendra T.K, and my mentor, Amitanand Aiyer. I had the freedom to come up with the design for these two projects, and they provided me with continuous feedback. In addition, they always made time to sync up with me on my progress, extending their constant guidance and support.
A Look Back at My Summer Internship
I really appreciate how interns at Yugabyte get to work on critical aspects of the database, and the people I worked with are very smart and extremely helpful. They pay attention to every detail. Even as an intern, I was able to speak at two design review sessions and present my approach, where I received suggestions and ideas for possible enhancements from many of the engineers who attended. The entire Yugabyte community is really passionate about their work.
My internship has been pretty awesome. I had a great time working alongside the engineers here at Yugabyte, and I’m looking forward to joining them after I graduate. I would recommend Yugabyte and YugabyteDB to anyone looking for an exciting work environment. It is a great place to learn, contribute, and have fun at the same time!
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