Computer Science Internship Story: Epsilon

Charlotte Vance
Computer Science, ‘22

Where did you intern?
I interned with Epsilon, a marketing and technology firm headquartered in Irving (Dallas), Texas. Although the internship itself was virtual, I was in Dallas for the summer and was able to meet up with a few of my fellow interns and coworkers throughout the summer.

How did you find and apply for your internship? Did you use a specific resource or attend a particular recruiting event to search for internships (i.e. Handshake, career fairs, etc)? What was the application process like?
Epsilon doesn’t recruit at Auburn specifically, so I had to reach out to them directly and insert myself into the hiring process (which was 3 interviews, the final of which was 4 hours!).

Tell us about your internship experience. What types of tasks and projects did you engage in? Was there a particular project or part of the experience you learned the most from?

Even though the internship was virtual, Epsilon’s Early Career Team has a phenomenal intern program set up for the 60+ interns across all of Epsilon’s offices in the US. The virtual nature of it really allowed us all to connect in a way that wouldn’t be possible if it were in person. The intern program hosted all of our onboarding sessions and hosted events throughout the summer for us to connect with the “higher ups” at Epsilon and learn about all of Epsilon’s different services and job areas. It was super cool hearing about all of the ins and outs of the company in each area and how the technology they use for incredibly effective marketing is developed. We also had an intern group project that lasted 4 weeks where we were assigned to a client that needed us to solve a real-world business problem for them through intense research and design.  I worked with a major toy retail brand to figure out how to cross-sell/up-sell their products across multiple households. My day-to-day role was with a major finance brand, where I worked with our full-time associates to maintain national and international loyalty platforms. This included attending lots of meetings, shadowing my manager to see how issues are resolved, learning how to use Epsilon’s tools like Jira, Postman, and Harmony (email marketing campaign tool), and lots of data processing through Excel and Dynatrace.

In what ways did your coursework or other experiences at Auburn prepare you for your internships? Are there specific topics or skills you learned from classes that you put into practice on the job?
I got to hone coding skills in languages that I have yet to encounter in my classes at Auburn like SQL. I appreciated this internship because it allowed me to explore areas outside of my major like marketing and advertising, while still allowing me to use my technical background and skills that I’ve gained here at Auburn.

Do you have any advice for other students looking for internships like yours?