Meet the InfluxData Summer 2021 Interns

By Pat Gaughen / Use Cases, Developer, Company
Jul 12, 2021

With the 2021 InfluxData internship program in full swing, we wanted to take a moment to introduce the wonderful people that are joining us for a summer of work and fun.

Sara Ghodsi

Sara joins us from North Carolina State University where she’s in the third year of her PhD program. She’s joined the InfluxData Compute team where she’s been writing API tests for different services, writing code to generate tokens properly in order to run the API tests the right way, and is currently working on doing some experiments on Bucket service with canary testing. Since joining us, she’s learned about time series databases, microservices, Kubernetes, and much more. When Sara’s not working, she enjoys spending time with her family and friends - watching TV shows, YouTube and Twitch - and she also loves to cook.

Mya Longmire

Mya is a Rising Senior at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. She’s been with the InfluxData Telegraf team for about a month now and has learned a lot during that short time - not only how Telegraf works but a list of complex protocols she didn’t know existed, like SNMP. She’s been working on smartctl bugs, a complete SNMP plugin rework, and security and dependency issues. When she’s not diving deep into the Telegraf internals, she enjoys knitting and building engines.

Merrick Tian

Merrick is a Senior at University of Maryland, College Park and has one more semester to go!  He’s on the InfluxData UI team and has been mainly focused on refactoring code. So far during this internship, most of what he’s learned correlates with working with a large codebase: version control, how to maintain the code, how to introduce new code, and testing. He’s also learned some things about how to use the product. When he’s not working, Merrick likes to play video games and is really into fighting games right now.

Dane Strandboge

Dane just graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. He’s on the InfluxData Edge team where he’s primarily working on CLI tooling, InfluxCLI for OSS/Cloud and influxd inspect for OSS 2.x. During his short time here, he’s learned a lot about Go, the workplace environment, and how important test cases are for production code. In his free time, Dane likes to play games, and write code for video games.

Alex Krantz

Alex is a Rising Sophomore at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver). He joined the InfluxData Telegraf team where he’s been fixing a wide variety of bugs and adding some features. He has been working on issues concerning everything from cloud platforms to message queues to parsers. So far, he has learned about the difficulties of maintaining a project and not making breaking changes when adding or fixing something. He has also learned a great deal about how to use and connect to the various services and software that Telegraf connects to. When he’s not working, Alex loves getting outside, whether it is hiking, biking, backpacking, or anything else. He also occasionally does some light gaming, and often works on any personal projects he’s started in his free time.

Brandii Warden

Brandii is a Rising Junior at UC Berkeley. She’s been at InfluxData for about a month so far and says she already feels like she’s considerably strengthened her technical skills. She’s learned a new coding language, strengthened previously known coding languages and learned more about new technologies! One of the most important lessons she’s learned is how to collaborate with a team of professionals and contribute where needed. She’s also learned that everyone here genuinely wants to support you. Someone is always around to help work through any problems you may have and give you more knowledge. Brandi is on InfluxData’s Compute team, and so far has worked on API tests. She has been expanding API test coverage by adding test cases to beta grace tests and making sure they comply with OpenAPI documents. As of recently, she has been working on API tests for a new feature that may be used as a resource for tasks in the future. In Brandii’s free time, she loves to hike and go on walks to enjoy the fresh air. She also loves programming, watching documentaries and learning new things!

Noe Garcia

Noe is a Rising Senior at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. He’s on the InfluxData Flux team where he’s been working on formatting issues of the Flux language, as well as working on a documentation project for the Flux language with the other intern, Bar.  Since he’s gotten here, he’s been learning Rust as well as experiencing working on a large project with other engineers, and how code is developed in large open source projects. When Noe is not working, he loves watching movies, playing video games and reading.

Michelle McFarland

Michelle is a Senior at Oregon State University and will graduate from her post-baccalaureate program next March. She is on the InfluxData Edge team and is constantly learning about the unique concepts and considerations related to time series databases. Her school only taught about relational databases, so Michelle has enjoyed learning about all the ways that InfluxDB has been optimized for working with time series data. Another thing she has learned is how to work on an existing codebase, and the importance of being able to consult documentation, trace code effectively, and ask targeted questions. Since she has started, she’s been working with her team to decouple the influx command-line interface from the OSS InfluxDB codebase. Now she’s switched over to reinstating the functionality of the influxd inspect subcommands from InfluxDB 1.x. When Michelle is not working, she likes sewing/quilting, exploring the outdoors with her husband and two dogs, paddleboarding and kayaking. Michelle is also a former teacher. Prior to going back to school for computer science, she spent almost 5 years working in education-related positions, including middle and high school science teaching, college tutoring, curriculum development, and camp counseling.

Aidan Tai

Aidan attends Harvard College, where he will be a sophomore next year. He’s learned a lot during his internship on the Developer Advocacy team about InfluxDB specifically but also about a wide range of Arduino and IoT-related technologies. He’s working on developing various IoT demonstrations that are integrated with InfluxDB and the Cloud 2.0 platform, and is mostly focused on community engagement and developer relations. When he’s not working,  he likes to play video games and work on other coding projects.

Bethelhem Legesse

Bethelhem recently graduated from Texas Tech University. She’s an intern on the InfluxData UI team and has been squashing various bugs and implementing new features that make InfluxDB Cloud UI efficient and user-friendly. She’s learned how important asking questions is. Her advice, based on what she’s learned, is: “In this field especially, there will never be a time when you know everything. Utilizing all resources around you, including coworkers, to further your knowledge is key to being a successful engineer.”  When Bethelhem is not working she likes to exercise. That could be outdoor biking, playing tennis, yoga, weight lifting or hiking.

Bar Weiner

Bar is a Rising Freshman at Stanford University. He’s learned a ton since starting his internship here, such as how to code in Rust and GoLang despite their distinct features and usages; utilizing GitHub and Zenhub for agile development; understanding how clusters are managed and implemented using Kubernetes; and learning how the WASM works to facilitate interaction between the backend and the UI. The main thing he’s working on is a feature that automatically parses comments from the Flux Standard Library and delivers them to the UI to create documentation for Flux packages, options, and functions in the LSP. Before that, he was making changes to the Flux formatter to correct how it reads and formats input code. When he’s not working, he likes to surf on the California coast, read and eat good food. Overall, Bar has been enjoying himself a lot throughout his time at the internship, and is excited to see what he can achieve and learn in these upcoming months.

Lucas Anzoategui

Lucas goes to University of Colorado Boulder where he’ll be entering his senior year this fall.  He is interning on the InfluxData Marketing team where he has learned how to use Wrike and Marketo and has completed some assignments in both. He also learned more about marketing and the key things to look for, as well as learning more about the behind-the-scenes actions that have a bigger impact than he originally thought. So far he has worked on cleaning out the YouTube videos on the InfluxData YouTube channel. He’s also worked on organizing and fixing the customer pages, making sure they have the correct links and information. Most of his work involves putting data and information into spreadsheets. When Lucas isn’t working, he enjoys playing a round of golf with his friends.