How a Splunk Internship Helped Shivani Fast-Track Her Career

Shivani interned at Splunk in Summer 2022 and, after graduating from UC Berkeley, joined us full-time as a Software Engineer on the Release and Reliability team, based in the Bay Area. 

In her role, Shivani works on creating internal tools used for testing that support Splunk's Developer Owned Quality (DoQ) initiative and helps certify Splunk Cloud releases. After just a year in the role, Shivani was promoted and is now beginning to lead her own projects with the aid of Senior Software Engineers on the team. Additionally, she is taking an expanded role in her team's release certifications.

For Shivani, she said a crucial part of her journey is having "a great manager at Splunk who's allowed me to pursue a lot of the passions that I wanted." She is encouraged and supported to learn as much as possible when she is curious about a specific project or team, which has contributed to the opportunities she has received at Splunk. 

Read on to see how the Splunktern Program laid the foundation for Shivani’s success at Splunk!

Community 

While an intern, Shivani built a welcoming and supportive community through groups like the Womxn+ Employee Resource Groups. By joining Womxn+, Shivani “met women of different backgrounds and experiences, not even just in engineering, that wanted to help [her].” With the community Shivani built, she discussed career aspirations, goals, and her future, which helped her feel much more prepared and supported during her internship and was one of the main reasons she accepted a full-time position at Splunk. 

Shivani also prioritized networking during her internship by scheduling coffee chats with key stakeholders from across the business. When she started full-time, she felt like she had built a strong network at Splunk, “which made taking on projects a lot easier.”

Familiarity 

During her internship, Shivani became familiar with the tools and products, and was able to hit the ground running from Day 1. She felt as though she was able to “skip the couple of months it would take to get familiar with the tools and just dove headfirst into creating projects. Overall, it gave me a head start, which definitely helped when it came time to apply for promotion." 

Confidence

There’s one thing that Shivani said you need to start with, regardless of where you are… Confidence. “The best advice I could give to someone looking to grow in their career is that you're capable of accomplishing a lot more than you think you can, so push yourself,” she shared. 

Letting go of self-rejection allows us to discover that we are capable if we give it a try. Confidence plays a huge role in the goals we achieve, and Shivani wouldn't have gotten her promotion without the confidence to first apply for it. “You genuinely will miss every shot that you don't take. If you're thinking about setting up that coffee chat with the engineer you've always wanted to meet, do it. If you're thinking about asking your manager to help you apply for an upcoming promotion, do it. If you're thinking about applying for a Splunk internship, do it!”

Interested in interning with Splunk? Visit our career site to learn more and explore open opportunities.