Software Engineer - Palantir

The Big Apple

For my third co-op I was apart of the Foundry, Pipeline Builder Core team at Palantir, as a Software Engineer Intern. This time I was in the big apple (New York City) and had quite the fast paced internship. Palantir is a Data Integration company and helps enterprises take there huge distributed data across all channels, put it into one platform and pretty much do anything they want from there with the data. Foundry takes different distributed and scattered data sources, integrates them into one platform, allow users to connect the data and create real life object representations known as ontologies. Pipeline Builder specifically allowed users to take their data and form both streaming and batch production pipelines in our no code tool. Whether they wanted to perform analytics, create ontologies, or simply clean some data, the possibilities within builder are endless. My work was spread out between our microservices backend and front end repo. I worked by myself for my project with consistent check ins with mentor, leads, co-workers and overall team.

Coop Goals

• Learn Technical Problem Solving and Learn Industry Tools.

A lot of my work was done alongside talented engineers, in depth code reviews, and technically challenging projects. Because of this I would now say I have very high standards when writing and reviewing code, making code maintainable, solving problems using elegant solutions and most importantly writing code that is easy to understand. I also learned a lot about the industry tools and practices, such as very in-depth git features for specific actions (work trees, cherry picking, etc.), the importance of code reviews, and using modern day programming practices including features borrowed from other languages (talking about rust here). I also learned a lot about the importance of testing, and how to write extremely through tests for back end code.



• Learn new backend technologies whether it be databases systems, cloud services, internal services/architecture, and more

I learned a lot about the internal services and architecture of a large scale product such as Foundry. There are a lot more challenges and things to consider when dealing with data intensive applications, large scale problems, and frequent product update releases. With that being said I would say I got a very wide range of experience with different technologies, including but not limited to: Java backends, Gradle, Postman, JUnit, and tons and tons of internal tools/services.

Conclusion and Acknowledgements

My time at Palantir was probably my best yet as I got to enjoy everything NYC has to offer, and I have nothing but great things to say about my team, mentor, leads, and company. While this was one big chapter in my life with tons of growth and new experiences, I am always looking forward to the next one and see where my journey takes me.

I would like to acknowledge my mentor Adam Skrocki, my lead Drew Thoennes, product designer Nanwei Cai, and my team members (Richard Burdish and Tiffany Wang). This team was always kind, giving great feedback throughout my internship, and overall just great people. They made my internship the great experience that it was and I cannot thank them enough for helping me grow in more ways than just technical. Anytime I felt stuck, confused, or needed a hand, always had someone to fall back on, while also being encouraged to push myself throughout different scenarios. This was an experience I will never forget, and I am happy that I got to be on the Pipeline Builder team/journey.