Starting my career at Wolt: Tung’s story

At Wolt, we’ve got over 100 product teams made up of almost 1000 talented engineers, designers, analysts, and product leads building our products around the world. Every year, we welcome software engineering interns to join our teams to play an important part in making Wolt better for our customers, partners and internal teams. 

Interns at Wolt get to dive deep into how we build products. They’re warmly welcomed to actively take part in the “behind the scenes” action of making software that millions of customers and hundreds of thousands of partners use on a daily basis. We’re proud that most of our interns get an offer to join us full-time after their internship, so our internship program is like a springboard to join Wolt permanently 🚀

What does the day-to-day of an engineering intern look like at Wolt? Let’s hear it from Tung who joined Wolt as an intern eight months ago and has joined us full-time as an engineer after the internship.

Hi Tung! Nice to meet you. How did you end up joining Wolt at our HQ in Finland? 🇫🇮

Before Wolt, I had two years of experience working in web development. After being laid off from my last company, I was looking for new opportunities as well as having some time to reflect on my career path. I’ve always been interested in mobile development. I’m amazed by how such small devices like phones and tablets can vastly improve everyday life. 

With my background in web development, it wasn’t easy to be qualified for mobile developer roles. But when an opportunity opened up as a Flutter software engineer intern at Wolt, I got intrigued about it. I gave my best shot at the coding assignment in the interview process, and luckily, I received the offer to join the team!

What was the software engineering internship like?

The team that I joined is responsible for developing the Flutter application that was set to serve all of the merchants (restaurants and stores that partner with Wolt) in 28 countries that we operate in. When I joined, Wolt was migrating from an old version of the Merchant App into the new Flutter version. I was onboarded as a new addition to the team and despite my job title, I didn’t feel like my teammates were treating me as an intern at all. I think it’s also a part of the Wolt culture, which I like very much, that everyone is so friendly and supportive. I never felt that my questions were going to be judged or criticized, so I never hesitated to ask a lot of questions to find the solution for the problem that I was working on.

I greatly appreciate my team lead and mentor’s support during the internship. They didn’t tell me what to do, but instead worked with me to figure out what I want to do and where I excel the most. That enabled me to get my hands on many different aspects of the project, not just coding but also analytics, product design, and roadmapping. In the end, the internship didn’t only help me grow my technical skills, but it also provided the opportunity to grow my network, my communication skills and other valuable skills that I need to thrive as a software engineer.

What does the day-to-day look like for a software engineering intern?

Usually my day would start with a 15-minute daily meeting among our team where everyone talks about what they’re working on now, what they’ll work on next and are there any difficulties that they need help with. After that, I’d mostly focus on the tasks that I’m working on, do pull request reviews, or carry out release testing. Sometimes I’d also need to communicate with stakeholders about various tasks, or ask my peers to add more clarity to the work that I’m doing. Whenever I might get stuck with something, I could always ping my mentor for help. 

Day-to-day I’m also involved in all of the meetings that are related to the progression of the project we’re working on. On top of that I’d attend meetings such as product demos, monthly company meetings and so forth. These things - despite how small or big they are - represent what I like most about our company culture. Wolt really values transparency and clarity. We really listen to and appreciate each others’ feedback and opinions.

What have been the biggest learnings in your journey at Wolt?

I learned a lot during my journey but the one of the most important things was learning the importance of having a good network at the company. One person can’t know everything. And you can’t always solve problems on your own. That’s why it is absolutely essential to have end-to-end knowledge about how everything works and who’s responsible for what. If you can do that then whenever you’re faced with a challenge, you know who can support you with some valuable inputs. My team lead taught me this and it was also one of my top goals during my internship.

How about the biggest learnings from a technical viewpoint?

On the technical side, I’ve learned about how to develop applications that are scalable. At Wolt, our products serve millions of people every day and scalability is always an important matter to consider. I got to learn the mindset to develop features with scalability so that the changes I make will add value for the tens of thousands of merchant partners we have. This isn’t an easy task to achieve, and I have to say that I still have a lot to learn about it.

Any tips for those thinking of applying for the internship?

When I was applying for the position, all I focused on was how to make myself stand out from the crowd. “Out of all the excellent candidates out there, why should we choose you?” was the one question that I tried to answer with my programming assignment. One of the most important things to me when I do anything is that I think about the value it generates for the users (or the stakeholders). Beside accomplishing the assignment’s requirements, I also added my personal views on how I think my product could add more value for the user.

So my tips for those applying to the internship at Wolt, or similar internships would be:

• Be mindful about the users of your products: always consider the value you bring to the business in your equations and customize your deliverables accordingly.

• It’s not just about the tech you use: Even if you know little about Flutter or the given technology, don’t hesitate to apply. New technologies can be learned and that ability to learn and adapt is one of the skills an interviewer will look for.

• Present your unique qualities: have an open mind and be willing to learn and improve from the feedback you receive.