Software Engineering Internship Story: Google

Nick Torres

Software Engineering

What company did you intern with and where are they located?

I interned at Google at their Seattle, Washington office as a Software Development Engineering Intern.

How did you identify and apply for your internship? Are there any specific resources you used to find the opportunity (i.e. Handshake, career fairs, other recruitment events)?

I was reached out on Handshake by a Google recruiter, and I applied through them.

What was the application process like?

After being reached out to, I was asked to join a call where I was told about the interview     process and I was also given a link to apply to the internship early.

After applying, I was given an Online Assessment that required 2 technical coding problems and depending on how well you do on this assessment impacts if you move onto the next round.

The next round is the Technical Interview portion, and this is where you are solving a coding problem while in a Google Meet call with a Google Engineer. They use this interview to analyze your thought process and problem-solving abilities. You will go through 2 rounds of this technical portion and each time it will be with a different engineer and with a different coding problem.

After determining whether you are a good fit and if you were able to solve the problems, you will be moved onto the Project Matching stage. This stage is where hosts from Google reach out to you with projects and they choose whether you would be a good fit for their project. They will schedule a 1:1 interview with you and gauge your interest. You are not guaranteed an offer while in the Project Matching stage, so it is especially important to be interested and qualified when hosts come to you with their projects. If the host believes you are a good match, then that is when they will extend an offer to you.

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?

My internship experience was amazing from start to finish. I was on the Street View team for Google Maps, and my project was creating an exciting, new feature for Street View on iOS. Throughout my time, I was able to learn from some of the best software engineers in the tech industry and I formed connections with many of my coworkers.

When I first started my internship, my tasks were squashing bugs on the Google Maps app, and this was used to get me familiar with the code base and using Google’s proprietary systems for submitting code changes and filing bugs.

Once I had gotten familiar with the systems, I started on my project by creating my design document as well as starting to learn Objective-C since that was the main programming language for Google Maps. For the rest of my time of my internship I was focused solely on this project and due to the feature potentially releasing soon, I cannot speak about the specifics of the implementation.

In what ways did this internship help you prepare for your next destination after Auburn?

I was unsure what kind of role and industry I wanted to work in after graduation, but after completing this internship I found that working in tech and specifically working in the frontend of apps and websites is where I found the most enjoyment. Frontend roles allow for the best work-life balance, and you also will not need to be on-call for these positions, and that is a big plus for me. I also found that the tech industry has so many benefits attached to the job outside of work compared to other industries, so it suits me best.

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?

One of the classes that helped me the most was Secure Software Process. It prepared me for creating a project from start-to-finish and using tools like GitHub for developing. When I joined Google, I was already familiar with Version Control Systems because of that class. The course Fundamentals of Programming also helped me to pick up a new programming language. I had never used Objective-C before and the learning curve for it was large. Thankfully, that course helped prepare me for pickup of unfamiliar things.

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

Practicing LeetCode problems would be my biggest advice. LeetCode is a website that hosts 100’s of coding problems for free. Interviews for Software Engineering roles have changed in the last 20 years, and now applicants are mostly required to do technical coding problems to attain offers for these kinds of jobs and internships. The highest paying jobs in the industry will more than likely ask you to solve these problems in the form of an Online Assessment or a Technical Interview. Before applying to Google, I had solved and practiced over 100 LeetCode problems to prepare myself for the technical rounds. After this kind of preparation, I was able to pass the technical side of the application process.