Internship Highlight- Steven Tra

Hello CSS Community: My name is Steven Tra and I am a junior pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics. This past summer, I worked as a technology intern at the Republican National Committee (RNC) in Washington D.C. Overall, this internship provided me with additional technical experience in my field, particularly in the areas of web development and cybersecurity.

I procured my internship with the RNC through the Eisenhower Summer Internship Program. The program lasted ten weeks, and it spanning from May 31st-August 4th. As opposed to my research experience last summer, this internship was full-time, and it typically consisted of 40-hour work weeks with some intern field trips and social events happening intermittently. During the first half of my internship, I created a Facebook chatbot that was designed to interact with users and advertise the merchandise sold by the GOP. My bot would essentially provide users with voting information, links to purchase GOP apparel, and links to donate to the GOP. During the second half of my internship, I wrote penetration tests for the GOP’s QA website in order to check for security vulnerabilities. I learned quite a bit about web development and cybersecurity from this experience; I will definitely apply the skills that I learned at the RNC in my other classes and in my future career.

Although I do not plan to work as a web developer in the future, this internship provided me with a comprehensive and practical view of what web development entails. I cannot say if I prefer web development over normal software engineering however, I believe that this internship gave me the skills to be more competitive in the job market considering that I now know web development.

CSS Team Leader & Webmaster,
Steven Tra