My Co-op Internship Experience at SessionM, A Mastercard Company

On the afternoon of a winter day in the third week of November 2017, I got a call. The person on the line informed me of being from SessionM and inquired if I’m still available for co-op. We scheduled the interview for the following week.

Two days after the interview, I received the offer letter — and I began my internship a month later in January.

I thank SessionM for giving me the chance to do my first Software Engineer job. The internship had a slow start with me making mistakes and learning from them — as well as from my supervisor — who himself was a student at that time. For most of the part, the months of late December to March, in Boston, are almost a sight from Winterfell, and many times, even North of the Wall comes alive. And oh, I didn’t want to do WFH in the first few months of my first job.

About SessionM

SessionM is a customer data and loyalty management platform — which is integrated with Salesforce clouds as well. I got the opportunity to work on SessionM’s features for its Salesforce extensions. Thanks to my manager, which helped me enter the world of cloud engineering and development with upfront hands-on experience.

My Work

Salesforce Commerce Cloud (previously Demandware) is a full-featured platform for developing e-commerce websites. Additionally, it allows clients to install software to extend the functionality (called Cartridges). I implemented certain new SessionM Platform features into its Salesforce Commerce Cloud cartridge, besides minor tweaks and bug fixes.

I worked on several complex integration projects, using Java, Apex, and JavaScript as primary languages. One of the most significant advantages of my work was that the role involved coordinating internationally with SessionM’s teams in Pittsburgh, PA and a third party firm in India, while developing, debugging through an extensive code database written by my predecessors. Not only I acted as a point of contact with multiple other teams, I even interviewed and mentored new interns who would end up building upon my work once after August.

Summary

In summary, the projects I worked on included:

  1. Extending SessionM package for Salesforce Service Cloud with SessionM Notes module.
  2. Building features in SessionM cartridge for Salesforce Commerce Cloud for SessionM Offers module using SessionM platform APIs besides other tweaks and bug fixes.
  3. Integrating SessionM OAuth 2.0 with these platforms.
  4. Designing, developing, and deploying reports for automation environment using Java and TestRail API.
  5. Documenting all this work.

The work involved implementing various RESTful APIs, writing code in Java, JavaScript, and scripting in Python and Bash. The projects I worked on helped SessionM gain funding and high revenues from valuable clients like Salesforce and Brookstone.

My stay at SessionM was not filled just with hands-on learning but with a lot of majestic seaside views of Seaport area and — delicious Wednesday lunches and Friday breakfasts, among other events — 🌮😋. More on that, later!