From internship to junior data engineer

Work that matches study and own learning goals

Looking for a side job alongside his master’s degree in Data Science in Business & Entrepreneurship, Levy van Kempen joined Blenddata in January 2023.

“As a working student, I could be found at Blenddata one day a week and got to know the company well. I mainly worked on internal projects, such as developing a portal in Streamlit that allowed colleagues to fill in their availability. This portal acted as a capacity planning tool and was used to better plan and organise staffing on new and ongoing projects.

I was also involved in a customer project where I dealt with small problems that were not a priority but did need to be solved. One of the things I learned was how to work with the DBT tool: a fairly new technology at the time, which was widely used within Blenddata. This knowledge and experience comes in handy now. My part-time job at Blenddata matched both my studies and what I wanted to learn. As a result, it almost felt like getting paid to learn.”

A thesis that is of real use

A year later, after comparing different options, Levy decided to do his graduation research at Blenddata as well.

“At Blenddata, I was given the freedom in subject choice and approach I wanted. I could design my project the way I wanted.”
Levy’s thesis research was on Gen AI and stemmed from Blenddata’s desire to gain insight into how Gen AI could be applied to customers, as an additional service. “This client wanted to explore the possibility of using AI to answer non-technical users’ questions about financial data, to answer, for example, the question ‘how much monthly revenue was made?’ It was now taking the data team a lot of time to answer these kinds of questions and provide feedback.

Discovering your passion step by step

As a working student and during my internship, I had a great time at Blenddata. The team works on very nice projects and the culture within the company is very good.

“People like coming to work, want to help each other and achieve something together as a group. Colleagues also have a lot of contact outside work. With drinks parties, but also sports activities, for example, you are encouraged to visit each other.

After my internship, I thought hard about where I would like to work, but the answer was definitely Blenddata. I just really like it. Blenddata gives you the opportunity to learn and experience a lot, in an environment where you are encouraged to try new things and technologies, without being tied to them. You don’t have to do anything, but can do everything. As a result, you discover step by step what your passion is. So I don’t regret my decision to start working here as a junior data engineer for a moment.”