Maarten and Tars are both studying Graduate Programming. Maarten at UCLL and Tars, who wants to reorient himself towards the employment market, via VDAB. They selected DNS Belgium from a list of internships as part of their final examinations.
Why DNS Belgium?
Tars: ‘I went looking for an internship that used different technologies and worked with different languages and frameworks. DNS Belgium indicated that there would be work at both the front-end and back-end, so it was an opportunity I wanted to take.’
Maarten: ‘When I read the explanation about DNS Belgium and the assignment that came with it, I immediately sent off my CV and cover letter.’
What did you do during your internship?
Maarten: ‘I worked on Mercator, which is DNS Belgium’s web crawler. Both on the underlying code that makes Mercator work and to the website that displays the data that Mercator retrieves.’
Tars: ‘I worked on stories, mainly at the back-end and sometimes at the front-end. There’s a list of tasks to choose from and we are left fairly free about what we do and when.’
DNS Belgium works according to the scrum principle. This means, among other things, that a colleague from Product describes each task or change in a so-called story. An engineer works on the story and implements what it describes. Then the story is tested and validated. When the story is ready, it is shown to all colleagues during a demo.
So, what did this enable you to learn during your internship?
Tars: ‘I got to know new languages and technologies, such as Kubernetes, Terraform, Typescript, React, etc.’$
Maarten: ‘I found out a lot about Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, React, Docker, agile working and so on. I learned what it’s like to programme in a company and that I should not hang about for too long before I ask for help or feedback.’
Did DNS Belgium also learn something from the interns?
Kevin (internship supervisor): ‘Students provide us with a new look at old problems. We can sometimes get a bit bogged down in our thought patterns, making it harder for us to think outside the box. Our experience makes it easier for us to see where things can go wrong, but this also leads us to overlook some of the solutions or opportunities. Combining ourselves with students ensures we arrive at the best possible solution.’
How were the students supervised?
Kevin: ‘The data diggers are a small team of two engineers, an R&D person and a producteer. We supervised them as a team. For each story the students work on, we choose a mentor who is their point of contact for that particular story and who helps them.’
What’s it like working for DNS Belgium?
Maarten: ‘It’s always very pleasant here at the office. Everyone is very friendly and always ready to help. The ‘tactical’ session each Tuesday also gives you an idea of what the other teams are working on.’
What's next? Are you considering another internship or looking for a job?
Maarten: ‘I’m currently looking for work.’
Tars: ‘As a VDAB student, I started studying again later in life and am contractually obliged to get a job after completing my course.’
Which students would you recommend an internship at DNS Belgium to?
Tars: ‘Although I had to learn a lot in the beginning, I would still recommend an internship at DNS Belgium to students who, like me, are pursuing a degree in Programming. It’s a highly enjoyable and instructive environment.’
Maarten: ‘I would definitely recommend an internship at DNS Belgium – especially for students who like a challenge and want to learn lots of new things. Plus you’re well supervised and supported here. You get the time to learn things.’
Internship
Want to acquire a first work experience as an intern? That's possible at DNS Belgium. We welcome students from a wide range of disciplines: computer science, economics, communication and commercial engineering, to name a few.
Let's explore together how we can make it a successful internship.