We rounded out our summer by launching big updates to one of ConductorOne’s core products—user access reviews. ConductorOne users now have the ability to schedule recurring access review campaigns and to more finely scope reviews by specific parameters. The features build more automation and flexibility into the review process, which our customers are loving—as captured in this direct quote from a customer call last week: “Yesssssss!”
It always feels great to release features our customers are stoked about—especially because we know the hard work our team has done in the background to thoughtfully design, build, and fine-tune those features before they ever go live. But this most recent launch was doubly cool because the engineering team responsible for it included our four stellar 2024 summer engineering interns!
Before they move on to the next exciting steps in their degrees and careers, we wanted to chat with Bema, Vipul, Grant, and Ridha about the work they put into making this latest product release a success and what it was like to be a part of the summer intern C1rew.
Having a direct impact
Bema Fisher and Vipul Gowda worked together on both the frontend and backend of access review campaign templates, which allow users to scope a campaign once and then schedule it to be run on a recurring basis. The interns built out the elements users configure to create their templates.
“I liked working on a feature that was actually going to be used by customers—we had to make sure that things were working correctly,” says Bema, who just graduated with a bachelor’s in computer science from Oregon State. Vipul agrees and adds that updating features customers already use presents an interesting set of challenges. “We had to revamp things other engineers at ConductorOne had previously done and make sure that the new feature and old feature combined in a way that makes it easy for the user.” The two worked together to create an intuitive toggle button that allows users to quickly designate whether they’d like to set a template to be recurring or not.
Vipul, who’s currently back in school for his master’s after spending a few years working as a software engineer, also liked getting more experience with the backend. “I got the opportunity to learn how the databases are connected and how to write APIs.” Working alongside the ConductorOne engineering team, he was able to build on skills he’d already developed. “It’s a great opportunity—like an advanced step. They’ve been great mentors,” he says smiling. “I’ve bugged them a lot.”
When a campaign is set to be recurring, ConductorOne can automatically notify the campaign owner in Slack before the next start date so they can confirm everything looks good or make changes. Bema helped with the communication functionality that allows notifications to be sent to Slack. She appreciates that the work was sometimes challenging. “Of course there were some struggles, but I feel like learning happens through struggles, especially when you have good support around you. The team at ConductorOne are really open to sharing their knowledge.”
“The best part is that we’re not working on an internal tool. This is a direct-impact project,” says Ridha Paramesh, who worked on the user interface for recurring campaigns and the new access review scoping options—which include users, user attributes, account owners and type, and more. Ridha just completed her master’s in computer science with a minor in AI, and she specifically wanted an internship in software—because without usable interfaces, it’s hard to bring AI projects to users. ConductorOne’s focus on creating a great user experience within the product was important to her. She was also excited to work with current and emerging tech. “We’re not using outdated technologies. Everything is the latest technology and we’re updating every day. We’re working with the Gen Z versions of everything!” she laughs.
Grant Kopczenski worked with Ridha on various user interface aspects of the project, including the new tab that guides users to their list of recurring campaigns, as well as backend functionality. Grant’s currently finishing up his undergrad and has the distinction of being the ConductorOne veteran of the bunch—he interned with our engineering team last summer as well. Last year, he helped launch some of the engineering tooling that makes ConductorOne so flexible and extensible—like our API, CLI, connector SDK, and Terraform provider. “Everyone here is really smart and good at what they do,” he says, explaining why he wanted to spend another whole summer with us. “It’s been really helpful to spend as long as I have here.”
What’s next?
Like Ridha, Grant has a degree focus in AI, but he’s really enjoyed learning about the software development side of things at ConductorOne and can see software as a career path going forward, though he says “game design would be an interesting hobby.”
Vipul feels the same. “Everything I’ve done here aligns with what I want to do—software engineering and even more backend work on things like distributed systems and scaling things up.” He likes how software keeps him on his toes. “If the code isn’t working, it keeps you awake until it gets resolved.”
Bema’s enjoying full-stack development right now—it’s cool to immediately see the results of what she’s coding. But her motto is to not follow one specific path yet. She’s a career changer, so she knows that every path has a lot to teach. “I want to keep my eyes and hands open to everything and just learn, learn, learn.”
Ridha is also a software engineering fan and plans to keep developing her skills in that direction alongside her interest in AI. Her ultimate goal is to stay in the industry “for just about 10–15 years and then go for a PhD and be a professor.” Paying it forward to future generations of engineers!
ConductorOne software engineer Michael Burton has been overseeing the interns’ work this summer along with software developer Phoebe Yu. Michael doesn’t hesitate when asked what it was like to work with the intern team: “It’s been awesome.” He emphasizes how cool it’s been to work together on a revamp of one of ConductorOne’s core products—and how well the team has performed. “I didn’t know what to expect from a team that’s two-thirds interns. We’ve been hitting our targets on time and it’s clear how much everyone has grown.”
A huge thank you to Bema, Vipul, Grant, and Ridha from the entire C1rew—and our customers!—for hanging out with us this summer. Your energy, creativity, and hard work have made our product better. Whoever gets you next couldn’t be luckier!
