Internship Spotlight: Amazon

Adarsh Agarwal

MS/IM student Adarsh Agarwal discusses his summer internship at Amazon.

What is your research focus at the iSchool?

I am majoring in information management with a focus on data science and analytics.

Where do you intern, and what is your role?

I am currently interning at Amazon-Seattle as a software development engineer intern. In this role, I am working on building software as services and AWS cloud infrastructure to support those services.

How did you find out about the internship?

I found out about this internship during a campus career fair in fall 2019, when I attended Amazon's booth.

What new skills have you acquired?

Some of the skills include building software as a service and working with AWS CDK (Cloud Development Kit) to build scalable infrastructure to support my service. The internship project will help me enhance my design thinking abilities. Amazon interns are given complete ownership of their projects, from requirements gathering to delivery, so ownership and successful delivery are important qualities to gain.

What do you like best about working at the company?

Amazon enforces their fourteen leadership principles. Everyone strongly adheres to these principles, which is a big factor in why Amazon is so successful today. Also, they greatly support the professional development of their interns.

What would you advise current students who are interested in an internship opportunity?

The job application process is almost entirely virtual now and is heavily dependent on a good resume with decent projects and work experience, especially for technical roles. I recommend working on some solid technical projects to build a good profile. Work experience is optional, although it definitely adds brownie points. The University of Illinois Research Park has multiple opportunities that provide both work experience and interesting technical projects.

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

iSchool alumni and student named 2025 Movers & Shakers

Two iSchool alumni and an MSLIS student are included in Library Journal's 2025 class of Movers & Shakers, an annual list that recognizes 50 professionals who are moving the library field forward as a profession. Leah Gregory (MSLIS '04) was honored in the Advocates category, Billy Tringali (MSLIS '19) was honored in the Innovators category, and University Library Assistant Professor and Digital Humanities Librarian Mary Ton (current MSLIS student) was honored in the Educators category.

Spectrum Scholar Spotlight: Dalia Ortiz Pon

Twelve iSchool master's students were named 2024–2025 Spectrum Scholars by the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services. This "Spectrum Scholar Spotlight" series highlights the School's scholars. MSLIS student Dalia Ortiz Pon earned her bachelor's degree in Latina/Latino studies from San Francisco State University. 

Dalia Ortiz Pon

Debnath datafies "The Bulletin"

MSIM student Tan Debnath, whose interests span data mining, statistical modeling, text mining, and digital humanities, joined the Center for Children's books as a research assistant. He was tasked with building curation processes that would datafy seventy-five years' worth of archival issues of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, one of the nation's leading children's book review journals.

Tan Debnath stands casually with his hands in his pockets and smiles broadly at the camera. It's a sunny day

iSchool undergraduates selected as 2025 Community-Academic Scholars

The Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute (IHSI) has selected BSIS student Dhanvi Puttur and BSIS+DS student Lara Terpetschnig as 2025 Community-Academic Scholars. Representing nineteen majors and nine minors in eight colleges and schools at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and two additional universities, the eighteen scholars in this cohort encompass diverse fields of study, from community health to graphic design to statistics. 

BSIS+DS student Lara Terpetschnig and BSIS student Dhanvi Puttur

Guan successfully defends dissertation

Doctoral candidate Yingjun Guan successfully defended his dissertation, "Disambiguating Academic Institution Names: A Comprehensive Study of Authority Files, Linguistic Variations, and Computational Evaluation in PubMed Affiliations," on April 28. 

Yingjun Guan