A day in the life of a fintech intern
Ong Jun Xiong is a client engineering intern at Thought Machine, which builds cloud-native core banking technology. In his 12-week internship, Jun Xiong helps the Client Engineering team deliver on their goals to design and build client-specific solutions. Jun Xiong is a final-year computer science student at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and President of the NUS Fintech Society. This is what an average day in his life looks like.
8:30 a.m. The day starts, meeting with coworkers at a nearby café. Today is the last Friday of the month, so it’s “breakfast roulette”! We are randomly grouped with four other colleagues from different departments over breakfast. We talk about the latest happenings within the company and industry updates, and sometimes I get the opportunity to seek advice from a more senior colleague about building my career in the fintech space.
10 a.m: We go to the office to kick-start the workday. As a client engineer, my role centres around maximising product usage by designing and building solutions catering to the client’s project requirements. I am also developing a balance adjustment remediation tool tailored to Thought Machine's products, as part of my internship project.
10:30 a.m I enter a series of meetings with my team, which consists of client engineers and business analysts. Our team operates using the agile development methodology - these meetings involve conducting a brief review of our past work and planning our project's future course. We come up with ideas that innovate the project or address roadblocks impeding our progress.
11:30 a.m., I typically forgo lunch due to my preference for light eating; the hearty breakfast earlier helped. Sometimes I take this time to have a coffee chat with other colleagues. These discussions give me a wider view of Thought Machine's operations and keep me abreast of the company's latest advancements.
12:00 p.m I focus my efforts on coding for my assigned project and handling some Jira tickets, which are tasks in the Jira project management tool used to keep track of bugs, issues, and their status.
The project I am working on is Python-based and slated to last roughly six weeks or three sprint cycles. If I encounter difficulties comprehending our APIs or the product, I can contact senior client engineers for help or my mentor, assigned by Thought Machine’s buddy system.
2:00 p.m. We have a planned learning session on consumer banking facilitated by our in-house banking specialist. These sessions are often scheduled when we need to deepen our understanding of the products we are handling.
3:00 p.m. I have a one-on-one discussion with my manager. We discuss my project progress, reflect on the insights from my internship, and ensure my overall welfare and career advice, exploring potential future directions.
3:30 p.m. I resume my project, investing my time in writing test code for the parts I have modified. This critical step verifies the quality and dependability of the code I have developed.
4:00 p.m. As it's a Friday, we have TMF - Thought Machine Fridays. It is our weekly town hall where we get to hear from colleagues on projects they are working on, or we may have a Q&A session with senior executives; sometimes, they join us virtually from the UK, where Thought Machine’s head office is based. In the upcoming weeks, I am excited to join TMF to showcase my project, which is the balance adjustment remediation tool I have been working on with another intern in the same team.
5:00 p.m. Following TMF, we gather for some light food and drinks. We mingle with colleagues, discuss weekend plans, and establish relationships beyond work projects. TMF brings us all together to celebrate our successes and relax before the weekend kicks in.
6:00 p.m. On a regular day, I usually head home now, or after finishing my tasks.
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