Own internship program for Sebastian Knopf from Pforzheim
Sebastian Knopf met us at IT-TRANS 2018 and engaged our Head of Development, Sebastian Schnieder, in a technical discussion. At the end of the conversation, the topic of an internship with us came up.
Sebastian Knopf is studying Traffic Systems Management with a focus on Computer Science at Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences. He is nearing the completion of his studies, with the submission of his bachelor’s thesis — focusing on the UI design (User Interface) of a mobile application for train conductors — coming up soon. Nevertheless, now is the perfect time for him to complete an internship at a software company before entering the workforce. Besides his studies, Sebastian works at a transportation company and even holds a train driver’s license.
The essentials at a glance:
Of course, all our interns are great, motivated, and unique. But one stands out: Our intern Sebastian Knopf studies Traffic Systems Management with a focus on Computer Science in Karlsruhe and met us in 2018 at IT-TRANS. Now, nearing the end of his studies, he completed an internship with us to see if working in a software company within the public transport sector could be enjoyable for him. So far, he has gained professional experience mainly in the public service and even holds a train driver’s license.
Internship Program with a Twist
Usually, our interns go through a program where they gain their first experiences in software development because they are generally interested in what a software developer does. Sebastian, however, came with more prior knowledge through his studies than a typical student intern. Accordingly, our training manager Rolf tailored the program to his skills in advance. “I’m already familiar with working in the public sector from my previous jobs, but before finishing my studies, I wanted to find out if this really suits me, or if I would also enjoy software development in the mobility sector,” Sebastian summarizes his expectations. To address Sebastian’s wishes and interests, Rolf collaborated with colleagues from sales, project management, and product management to develop a personalized program for Sebastian so that he could get to know as much as possible and gain valuable experience during his two weeks.
Future Public Transport Expert Meets AMCON Specialists
During the first days, Sebastian had many technical discussions, among others with our internal sales colleague Alexander, our product manager for bus solutions Alex, and our tariff expert Fabian. “A particular highlight for me was the UI development. I had never worked so intensively on desktop UI before, and it was very interesting to learn more about this topic and try things out myself,” Sebastian says. After spending the first week exchanging ideas with our CEO Olaf about HUSST, he then focused on working on a HUSST test program. HUSST is the manufacturer-independent standard interface that AMCON developed together with some competitors in the public transport sector to simplify data exchange between devices from different manufacturers. Since Sebastian had both the technical know-how and interest, he laid the foundation during the second week for validity tests, with which tariff validity rules and parameters can be checked using the HUSST test program.
Summary After Two Weeks at AMCON in Cloppenburg
“That was truly an interesting experience, and now I can very well imagine working in this field. It rather confirmed for me that both working for a transport company and working for a software provider in the public transport sector could be exactly right for me,” Sebastian sums up his two weeks in Cloppenburg. Thus, the aspiring bachelor graduate has all career options open—and we wouldn’t mind if he decided to move to Cloppenburg and officially join our team. On top of that, he quickly familiarized himself with the transportation system in our district and even visited some neighboring towns. “Sebastian was a very engaged intern, and I thought it was great that we could exchange ideas on such a technical level. He provided impulses and gained insights that will hopefully support him in choosing his career path,” summarizes Olaf Clausen about the collaboration with Sebastian.
If you’re interested in an internship at AMCON, feel free to get in touch! Send an email to bewerbung@amcon.de or call us at 04471 91420. We are happy to tailor the experience to your individual wishes, whether you’re interested in special areas of software development (UI development, Java, C#, and much more) or in the public transport and mobility sector.
Three Questions for Training Manager Rolf:
How did you adapt the internship program to cover as many of Sebastian’s interests as possible?
Rolf: Since Sebastian is interested in both computer science and mobility and already brings a lot of expertise with him, we designed these two weeks to be as agile as possible. The first week was for orientation, and in the second week we deepened the topics that interested him the most.
What did that look like concretely?
Rolf: In the first few days, Sebastian had technical discussions with our project managers and product owners about topics such as bus solutions and tariffs, and he had an extensive discussion with Olaf about HUSST and challenges in public transport. Since he was especially interested in HUSST, we identified a concrete problem from the HUSST environment that he could implement independently.
Do all interns at our company get individual internship programs?
Rolf: That, of course, depends on the interests and prior knowledge of the interns. Usually, we have school interns who are primarily interested in software development and bring less prior knowledge. But if someone is specifically interested in a topic like web development, mobile app development, or wants to learn specific programming languages (Java, C#, etc.), we are happy to accommodate individual wishes.