Our summer interns combined technical know-how with meaningful work

For Eightfold’s 14-person class of interns, this summer was not just a chance to hone their technical skills, but to do meaningful work toward Eightfold’s mission of the “right career for everyone in the world.” 

We caught up with a few of those interns to ask about their 10-12 week experience at Eightfold. Check it out below, and sign up to our Talent Network if you might be interested in a career opportunity.

Ray Qin came to Eightfold focused on the “technical aspect” of the work. But, as he interviewed, he became inspired by the company’s vision of helping provide the right career for everyone in the world. Having applied elsewhere, he’d been surprised at what he found. “You see huge, successful companies not doing well in their application process,” Qin says, including career websites with technical issues and frustrating and laborious processes for job-seekers. 

He enjoyed his Eightfold internship, which was focused on improving data consistency. Mentoring relationships with two employees were particularly helpful. Kevin Cherian brought him onboard with the core infrastructure team and Strayn Wang worked very closely with him throughout the internship. “They are both very experienced and have provided valuable guidance,” Qin says.

A double major in computer science and mechanical engineering, he sometimes takes six classes at a time, while many people take four. So, he’s looking forward to a little breather from school following his 2023 graduation from the University of California-San Diego. He hopes to work a few years at a company that combines leading-edge technology with a vision. Says Qin: “I found that the more you are interested in the product you are building, the more successful you will be.”

Sanjari Srivastava worked on improving Eightfold’s AI matching. She focused particularly on matching when different languages are used, so that the matching continues to be as effective in Portuguese and Spanish, for example, as it is in English.

For this, she used a variety of programming languages and tools. She says her colleagues at Eightfold were “very supportive, very helpful.” With many being young, she said, “it’s essentially like being on campus.”

After attending Eightfold’s mid-year-kickoff event last month with presentations from the founder and others, it solidified that “the vision of the company is appealing,” she says. When she graduates from Stanford, Srivastava hopes to get a job as a machine-learning engineer at a company with an equally compelling vision.

When Chavisa Thamjarat heard about Eightfold from a friend who works at Eightfold, she thought she’d work on “small tasks to support a team.” Instead, she took on significant projects mapping a variety of skills into meaningful clusters. “The tasks I was assigned were pretty challenging for me and helped me learn a lot,” she says. “We moved fast, worked in the agile style … I’m impressed by how fast we made decisions and rolled out the product.” She also is impressed by the hybrid environment: flexible schedules, remote work, and in-person work. 

She finishes her master’s at the University of California-San Diego in December, and hopes to get a job working on machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Ravsehaj Singh Puri has embraced Eightfold’s “extreme ownership” value. He’s been working on Talent Insights, an Eightfold product that allows customers to see where their current workforce’s skills are, and how those skills compare to competitors. (You may have seen Talent Insights reports on banking, semiconductors, telecom, or other industries.)

Puri’s “extreme ownership” involved managing the development of a Talent Insights-related product. He handled the “front end, back end, every piece of code, and deployment,” he says. “I was the full-fledged lead.” He presented his work to the leadership team at Eightfold. 

“My heart lies in machine learning and artificial intelligence,” he says. Upon graduation from Arizona State University, he hopes to work for Eightfold. “To be honest,” he says, “I cannot think of going anywhere else.”