It is the dream of many engineering students to land a job in Australia: the land of higher pay, more opportunities and a better life. (Engineering Revue did an excellent musical parody about it this year.) While I can’t speak for the other specialisations, Software has a number of overseas opportunities with companies such as Atlassian, Amazon, Canva, IMC, Jane Street, TikTok, and MongoDB offering internships and grad roles to NZ students.
Even if you’re not interested in working overseas full-time, it’s a fun way to spend a summer while gaining work experience. These internships are typically only offered to students in their penultimate year (Part III for engineers), so as a first-year student you’ll have more than a year before you realistically can start applying. However, it is a highly competitive field, so it’s never a bad idea to start preparing early.
To give you some insight on how to land an overseas internship, I thought who better to ask than my friend Lia. Lia is a friend from high school who graduated from software engineering at UoA at the end of last year. She interned at Atlassian in Sydney at the end of her third year and is now working there as a Graduate Software Engineer. It’s fair to say she knows a thing or two about overseas internships having successfully gone through the process, so I knew I had to interview her for the blog.
In our interview, I asked Lia about her experience working at Atlassian, as well as her biggest lessons and why she studied software engineering in the first place. Even if you’re not interested in getting an overseas internship, I hope this interview provides value in helping you decide which specialisation to choose.
Here is the interview:
1. Why did you choose software engineering?
I’ve always been fascinated by tech and the internet. When I was younger, I always fought my cousins for a chance to hop on the computer, my aunties’ phones and on the iPad (yes, I was an iPad kid 😎). I went on these devices not to code, though; I mostly just wanted to play online games like Club Penguin and muck around on social media. I didn’t even know what coding or software engineering was until I was in high school.
When deciding what to study in uni, I really liked the idea of creating something that can have a positive impact on others from my computer, and how quickly this impact can scale via the internet. I thought back to how much apps and the internet have helped me, and realised I wanted to do the same for others 🙂
2. What were your favourite courses in uni and why?
In first year, I remember liking ENGGEN 115 (Principles of Engineering Design) (even though I received my lowest grade for that year in this course haha), ELECTENG 101 (Electrical and Digital Systems) (William and Jesin are such great lecturers and I enjoyed working on the multiple choice questions), and ENGGEN 131 (Introduction to Engineering Computation and Software Development) (as it set such a solid foundation for SOFTENG, and coding is fun, ofc).
In software, I liked SOFTENG 750 (Software Development Methodologies) (now COMPSCI 732 (Software Tools and Techniques) ) and SOFTENG 325 (Software Architecture) as these courses were probably the most applicable to my day-to-day right now. I also liked SOFTENG 351 (Fundamentals of Database Systems), SOFTENG 282 (Software Engineering Theory), and COMPSYS 306 (Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning) as I found the content interesting.
In general, though, I actually really liked the courses that had group project work. I liked being able to work on something practical together with a team, and having something cool to show for it at the end of the course 🙂
COMPSYS 306 robot
SOFTENG 750 group project
3. What is an unexpected thing you learned during your degree?
An unexpected thing I learned during my degree is how to work well in teams. I feel like the amount of group work we did during uni did wonders for my communication and teamwork skills. It also taught me how to break down and delegate tasks more effectively, which is so useful at work.
I also learned the power of friendship and community 🤝. Before starting, I thought I would only be learning from the lectures and coursework, but I actually learned a great deal from group studying with my friends and from participating in uni clubs. Plus, it’s also nice to have people to celebrate your wins and Ls with, and knowing that you’re not in it alone.
Another thing I didn’t expect to learn in uni was how to use AI effectively. Most software engineers nowadays utilise AI to accelerate their development, and it is even encouraged at work. I still have a lot to learn, but I’m glad that I started using AI and developed my prompt engineering skills while I was still in university. Obviously, don’t use AI to cheat or rely solely on vibe code (your software engineering fundamentals and critical thinking skills are still really important!), but don’t completely avoid it. Use it to strengthen your understanding of concepts, brainstorm ideas, unblock yourself, or guide your approach.
4. What does a day in your life look like as a grad?
On my office days, I typically start with grabbing a flat white or matcha in the office, and grabbing some brekkie if I’m feeling it. Then I go back to my desk for the day to get some work done. I either sit with my team or with my fellow grads. Some days are more meeting-heavy, while on other days, I have none. I usually have my team meetings in the mornings (i.e., sprint planning meetings, team syncs, or a team retro) and social catch-ups or org-wide meetings (i.e., weekly demos, or going for a walk/coffee run with coworkers) in the afternoon.
In between meetings, I’m typically working on a project stream. This can involve coding a new feature, investigating bugs, refactoring code, learning new coding concepts, or planning. I also occasionally participate in pair/mob programming with my team to debug or discuss ideas.
Occasionally, the office hosts social events for the grads, or even company-wide ones, so I would end my workday by attending those. My favourite office event was a Super Mario-themed party, where they had set up an AR Mario Kart racing tournament in the office.
On the days I choose to work from home, I wake up a bit later than usual, but my day is pretty much the same, except more virtual and minus all the cool fun stuff from the office 😆
5. How does your degree translate to working in the industry?
There were many valuable lessons from my degree that I apply to my day-to-day now. As a frontend engineer, I often have to consider what is best for our users, so having learnt about Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) has become really handy. Also, I collaborate with different stakeholders (like product managers, designers, engineering managers, feature leads, other teams, etc.), so the requirements engineering course helped a lot too. Of course, I also apply the coding fundamentals, software quality assurance/testing, software engineering theory, teamwork skills, etc. that I learned during my degree to my everyday, too.
There’s probably a loooot of things that I’m forgetting here. I find that it’s not necessarily the specific languages or frameworks that we learned (although this definitely helps to know too!), but rather the ways of thinking and the software engineering mindsets that I developed during my degree that translate really well to working in the industry.
6. What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned from your time working at Atlassian?
I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned from working at Atlassian so far is not to be afraid to reach out for help. Your team is there to help you; you don’t have to have it all figured out all the time. It’s better to reach out when you get stuck, rather than spend way too long trying to unblock your work all by yourself. Set yourself a reasonable deadline, and if you can’t solve it within that amount of time, then ask for a pairing session or ask questions.
During uni, I remember naively thinking that I would know everything (or at least, most things) about software engineering once I graduated. The truth is, I still have a great deal to learn! And that’s normal. The learning doesn’t stop when you graduate. There are a lot of things you can only learn on the job, so you’re not meant to know everything, and it’s okay to need/accept help. Make the most of the team that wants to teach you 🙂
However, don’t forget to back yourself and trust what you do know as well – your input is still valuable, even if you’re just a graduate or intern.
7. What advice would you give to a student looking to get an overseas internship?
Firstly, make sure you do your research. Start by figuring out which companies you want to apply for, and try to find out as much as you can about them and their application process. I highly recommend attending company info sessions/events. Stay curious and ask lots of questions — remember, you want to figure out if you want to work for them, too, not just the other way ‘round. I also found the uni tech clubs’ career events really helpful, so make the most of those too.
Secondly, apply early! Overseas internship applications usually open much earlier than NZ ones. I remember starting my Atlassian application around January 2023 for their November 2023 internship, so I recommend starting to look early. Additionally, some companies hire on a rolling basis, which means that the longer you wait, the fewer roles will be available, making it significantly harder to secure an offer.
My final advice is to just go for it! You are more capable than you think. I nearly didn’t apply for the internship because I didn’t think I was good enough, but I’m really glad I did. It was such a fun summer, and I learned so much!
A big thank you to Lia for taking time from her busy schedule to answer questions for the blog!