The Intern Xperience at Nutanix

Free food, massages, and cool swag. Sounds like most tech companies these days, right? Assuming you said yes, you would be correct. However, at Nutanix, our interns have access to a lot more than that during their 12-week internship. Starting from day one, they are contributing and adding value to their respective teams.

“Am I going to do real work or intern work?” This very question served as a guide to Jessica Xiang, a master’s student in computer science at Georgia Tech, when searching for an internship opportunity. “That is what is important to me because I want to be hands-on and contribute to the team. And that is what was most attractive to me about Nutanix.” Like Jessica, many students are in search of impactful and purpose-driven work during their short 12 weeks at a company. In her role as a Software Engineering Intern, she did everything start to end - design, testing, implementation, and deployment.

Nicole Navaroli, a Business Services Intern, described her experience as “real-time and always changing”. As a business major with an emphasis in information technology at North Carolina State University, she was first exposed to our company at her university career fair. “The funky name Noot-a-nix caught my eye and I noticed it was in the IT field”. Through an organic job search, she came across a role that sparked her interest and to her surprise, it was with that company with the funky name. The rest was history. In her role on the services team, Nicole gained experience using multiple software tools, data analysis, and even exposure and first-hand experience with vendor negotiation.

Many of our interns come from various backgrounds and areas of interest. For many students, having to decide early on in your college experience what you want to do with your life is scary and unknown. But for Danny Holton, a business sustainability student at Arizona State University, he knew what he was interested in. “I’ve always been interested in how companies portray their image and brand. Business to business was interesting because you had to appeal to a business, not an everyday consumer. It’s truly based on the product, not an impulse or based on being trendy.” As a Corporate Marketing Programs Intern, his focus was on project management, specifically people and vendor management. “Project management - you are definitely gaining that skillset. I was doing a lot at once so I had to make sure to stay on top of everything.”

Similarly to Danny, one of our Systems Reliability Engineer Interns in our Durham office, Eddie Onsare, also knew what he was looking for. “My focus was to have a great experience and find a role that related to my academics. I really liked Nutanix because the focus on Linux mirrored my schoolwork and I was able to use those skill sets.” Eddie, an information technology student at East Carolina University, didn’t waste any time when he started his internship. From day one, training was facilitated before the SRE Interns took on their own cases. “The experience was self-driven as we were able to choose how many cases we took. The work wasn’t easy but you were given ample time and space to work through them. If you take the more challenging cases, you are more likely to get a return opportunity.”. 

But not everyone knows exactly what they’re looking for until they find it. Matt Vaughan, a business student with an emphasis in marketing at San Diego State University, found himself in this very situation. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I did another internship in event marketing and it was great to expose myself to that area. I heard sales was similar, so I just ran with it and wanted to try something new. I ended up loving it. I feel like my personality and ambitions better align with sales. I am fascinated with all the sales techniques and fell in love with it. I think that’s what I want to do for the rest of my career.” In addition to finding his passion for sales as a Sales Development Representative Intern in the bay area, he has found a second home at Nutanix with his sister, who has worked in marketing here for close to five years.

This year, we had over 100 interns join us across six locations in the US including Durham, NC; McLean, VA; New York, NY; San Francisco, CA; San Jose, CA; and Seattle, WA. Both our university and enablement teams programmed a variety of professional development, networking, and of course, fun events to allow our interns to interact and grow throughout the summer. The most anticipated week of the summer is Hack Week, where our interns get the opportunity to work collaboratively with interns from across the company on projects outside of their day to day scope at U-Hack and Camp X. The week took place at our San Jose, Ca headquarters and included a kick-off mixer, team building activities, and plenty of time to develop and work on their projects before the final day presentations.

Whether you are looking for an opportunity to dive into software development, jumpstart your career in technology sales, champion our customer support focus, or help marketing get the word out, check out our university careers page for opportunities that might be the perfect fit for you!