Hi, welcome to my blog post about my experience of doing an international internship! The blog post will cover the period of choosing a project/location, meetings and the internship itself, enjoy!

Frankfurt Skyline

So the idea of doing an international internship actually started on the first week of September 2022. For school, we had an internship market where we could select timeslots to talk with potential national and international companies.

My first option was the company Accenture and Finland. I booked a timeslot with the school's international coordinator.

This interview went very well. However, after some talking and explaining what I was searching for, she suggested 2 options; one was working with a research group in Austria, where I would be doing research attached to a university, and the other one was NVISO in Frankfurt am Main - where there were several projects to choose from.

These projects seem to be a better fit then the Accenture company which was more specialized in consultancy work. The NVISO company and the potential projects immediately sparked my interest. The coordinator would be sending information about the potential projects.

NVISO GmbH is an internationally active cyber security company, with more than 200 employees worldwide. They focus on innovation and professionalism, as the technical security of their customers is their highest priority.

After some more back and forth, my coordinator would get me in contact with someone at the company and she forwarded my portfolio and CV.

Meetings

Because of the nature of the fact that the internship is international, all the "getting to know meetings" would have to be done online.

The first meeting was with one of the HR persons Mrs. Kadir, she works in the HR department and was my contact for any issues regarding paper work. The other person attending the meeting was Mr. Nico.

The first interview was mostly focused on the company, what they do and what my expectations would be for the internship. The available projects were shortly highlighted but more details could not be given because the person responsible for the project was not present in the meeting. A new meeting needed to be scheduled.

With the second meeting on the books; I got a bit of time to think about the available topics.

In this meeting, 2 other persons were present namely: Mr. Patrick & Mr. Moritz. Mr. Moritz would be my mentor for the duration of the internship and project. We discussed some of the available projects again; the positives and negatives of each project and the added value to the company.

After this meeting, they allowed me some time again to think about the topic I would be working on. However my decision was almost completely set on the R&D project about payload crafting.

A follow-up meeting was scheduled with Mr. Moritz to go more in detail about the project and the planning.

During the lead up to the start of the internship, we scheduled several more meetings. The last meeting was with the internship mentor from the college and Mr. Moritz to discuss the expectation and to know what I would be working on. As this was already very clearly laid out this; all went perfectly smooth.

Departure

Frankfurt Skyline

Frankfurt am Main, is located about 5 hours and a half from my hometown.

Location

The NVISO office was easily reachable by metro with only 4 minutes travel time and about 10 minutes total of walking from my apartment, The Flag Philosophicum

Central Location Image
Bockenheimer Warte.
Central Location Image
Apartment Building Front View.

Stay

I arrived the weekend before the official starting date so I had time enough to get settled in my apartment and to explore the neighbourhood.

First Meeting

On my first day, my mentor gave me a tour of the building, all the essentials and information. After that, we started the meeting for the project itself, we discussed the planning and the initial focus.

We discussed the vision of the project, the architecture, planning the interviews with ARES Red Teamers, technical research and approval of experimentation for future decisions. It was also made clear in this meeting, that the end result of the project should be at minimum a MVP, so the project can be handed over after the internship to the internal labs team.

It's a bit of tradition at the company that when a new colleague or internship starts, the lunch of the day is paid by the company for everybody who is currently in the building.

So I got the opportunity to eat a delicious Döner from one of the stores nearby, it was very delicious!

Working

February

The first few weeks of the internship were dedicated to performing interviews with the potential users of the application and deciding on which technology would be used for the backend. The frontend framework would probably involved some kind of React framework as the internal Labs team is more familiar with.

March

The whole month of March was dedicated on creating the backend. The last week was focused on finishing up the backend so I could get started on the backend without the behaviour of the backend changing too much which would require a major redesign of the frontend. The reset of that week was also dedicated on documenting the behaviour, concept and deployment of the backend.

April

Normally, we had 2 weeks of Easter holiday, but I decided to only take one week and already start working again. The first week, my parents and grandparents came visiting for a weekend. We went shopping and did some sightseeing in the beautiful historical part of Frankfurt.

Frankfurt City Historical
Frankfurt City

The second week of April was dedicated on creating the frontend. The initial plan was to first create a simple layout - which would contain most of the required features and then redesign the UI with those features already implemented.

During the monthly meeting, I also had the pleasure of presenting my progress of the project to the ARES team. After the presentation, I continued working on the frontend. During the next sync meeting we noticed that some features still had to be implemented in the backend.

So I made a plan and started working on implementing it immediately. After finishing implementing the features, I returned to the frontend and also updated the backend documentation where required.

May

This month was focused on finishing the project, writing the documentation, fine tuning little bugs and adding new features if possible.

Having implemented the original features according to the original timeline, there was some time leftover to add some more features. One such feature was adding an internal tool to the project, the second feature was implementing the Metatwin into the project. I will have a separate blog post about that shortly.

The final deadline for the delivery of the project was the 11th of May. In that week, there would again be a final presentation with the ARES team demonstrating the capability and features of the project in its current state. All required features for the MVP were met and the project in its current state was a success.

The feedback from the ARES team members and lead, was that the end project was more than the expected MVP and was clearly usable in its current state.

After the ARES team meeting, I finished implementing the Metatwin logic into the project and started the development of the latest feature. As time was running I did not get the chance to get it into a state that was reasonable for deployment.

Conclusion

Overall, I am happy with the experience, the colleagues were fun to be around. Mr. Moritz at the company helped me through my first real project and it was a pleasant experience and I learned a lot!

In the beginning I hesitated if I wanted to do an international internship, but in the end I am happy of how it turned out and the project I got to work on.

The location, company, and project were exactly what I wanted to do for my internship. I also want to thank the international coordinator at my college for recommending me the project.

This was an unpaid internship, but I was reimbursed for the cost of the apartment.