At Twipe each summer, we welcome a cohort of interns to join our teams. During our internship programme, students are able to get valuable experience in the working world and interns bring fresh perspectives to challenge existing processes. This summer, Quentin Stroobants and Tristan Toye joined our Data & AI team. Read on to hear about their experience in the team and why they chose Twipe.
Why did you choose to do your summer internship at Twipe?
Tristan: At the start of the second year of my bachelors degree, my interest leant towards computer science. However, I was growing tired of the academic approach to learning and wanted some real world experience to guide me in my chose for future studies. Therefore, I attended the internship fair organised by VTK and met Twipe. After a great first meeting I decided to take my chances and reached out to the Twipe team. Two interviews (and some stress) later, I got the news that, despite my inexperience, I was accepted into the internship programme. I can without a doubt say that sending that email was one of the best choices I ever made.
Quentin: After having completed my MSc in Computer Science (AI) at the KU Leuven, I wanted to do a summer internship before starting my next MSc in Data Science for Business at HEC Paris to gain some experience as Software Engineer/Data Scientist in a tech company. I heard about Twipe via the VTK Job fair after hearing a lot of positive feedback from fellow students that did an internship at Twipe. The natural next step therefore was to apply for a summer internship as a Software Engineer in the Data & AI team at Twipe. I was looking for a smaller company where I could easily be integrated into a team and hopefully be able to do some impactful work. I was not deceived!
Which projects did you work on?
Tristan: During my 8 week stay at Twipe, I worked together with Stijn, Hanne and Tom from the Data & AI team and Dana from Business Development and Incubation. I worked on a standalone track focused on the automatisation of data visualisation and insights. Concretely, this means that I worked on building a repo that can automatically create client specific dashboards out of a general template. With this dashboard, we aimed to speed up general data analyses and provide clients with a daily updated overview of the impact of JAMES.
Furthermore, I got to see how the customer focused side of the company worked, by preparing the data insight session for Finnish publisher Keskisuomalainen and US-based Advance Local. I wrote custom database queries and did data validation. These queries resulted in graphs shown to the client to provide insights into how JAMES was impacting their users.
Quentin: Next to smaller data engineering tasks, my work was to look at ways to improve JAMES, the personalised recommendation system of Twipe. This was exactly the kind of work I was hoping for as it gave me the opportunity to put my coding & data science skills into practice. I enjoyed the freedom I was given to do this task, and I appreciated the trust that the Data & AI team gave me. At the end of my internship, my improved version of JAMES was tested on a group of test users. It is rewarding to know that the work I have designed is tested out with real users and that it is helpful and impactful for the company.
How did you find the vibe being part of the dynamic Twipe team?
Tristan: The overall team was nothing less than amazing! Despite being busy with work, they still made more than enough time to help me with all my questions and problems. I could always reach out to them to discuss the possible solutions to a problem. I also loved that the team had the faith to include me in relevant decisions and that they valued my opinion. The vibe was always on point and I felt welcome in the company.
Quentin: The working atmosphere at Twipe was really nice, everyone makes you feel welcome. The set-up is fast and you immediately get to write impactful code as software engineer. As a dynamic company, there are plenty of meetings and even as an intern you get the opportunity to assist in those meetings and learn from it. Twipe also makes sure the internship is instructive by providing different informative sessions about the structure of the company. I learnt a lot about the newspaper industry which I wasn’t familiar with, even though I read the newspaper every day.
A big advantage of working at Twipe is the overall positive vibe. Aside from working hard, there is place for fun and entertainment. A few examples are the hype around kicker during the lunch breaks, the pizza & game night organised during my internship and the meme-culture of the company.
Would you recommend Twipe to future interns?
Tristan: Yes, I most definitely would. For anyone who wants an internship where you can closely work together with an awesome team and have little red tape or barriers of any kind to ask for help, then Twipe is the place for you!
Quentin: I would definitely recommend Twipe to anyone looking for an instructive and fun internship. My 6 week of internship went by so quickly that I decided to extend my contract by one week!
