My SME Internship: Jemima – Vounder Analytics

Hi, I’m Jemima, a second-year computer science student. Last summer I completed a month-long SME Internship with Vounder Analytics

Vounder Analytics builds bespoke insurance data systems for other organisations and is moving the actuarial and insurance industry away from dated and unsuitable tools such as Excel.  

My experience 

A head and shoulders photo of Jemima, smiling

Before my internship, I did not think I would have been capable of the tasks I worked on. However, the workplace was a brilliant learning environment.

My tasks were clearly explained and presented to me in manageable chunks, with ample opportunity to ask questions. I also learnt a lot about insurance and actuaries (I didn’t even know what an actuary was before I started!). All in all, I was presented with fulfilling and diverse work, without being overwhelmed.

My employers were incredibly kind and welcoming and the office was very relaxed. There was no dress code, no exact start time, and I was allowed to listen to music while I worked. I was also treated to multiple team lunches and taken to watch a cricket match! 

I was really nervous before starting, but I would definitely recommend doing an SME Internship, as this experience has massively boosted my confidence and made me a lot less anxious about my path after university. It was also far more fun than I was expecting! 

My tasks and what I learned 

During my internship, I was tasked with creating a “how to” guide for actuaries learning how to do their work in Python. This introduced me to a new data manipulation package called Pandas and strengthened my overall programming knowledge.  

I also committed code towards a larger project on cleaning bordereaux files, using Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda. When a file was dropped in an S3 bucket, a script would run and return the cleaned file. For this project, I contributed code that ordered columns based on their calculation dependencies and integrated this into the larger code base. This was especially helpful, as I had struggled with AWS on my course and putting it into a scenario meant I could understand its use.   

I helped move their website over to a new platform, and gave a short presentation at the end of my internship about the work I had completed. 


The SME Internship Scheme 

The SME Internship Scheme is open and we are currently advertising internships that you can apply for.

Check out our website for more information, and details on how to participate.  

If you have any questions about the scheme, or anything else relating to careers you can speak to us on live chat

Read more blogs in our “My SME internship” series to hear about other SMEs that our students have worked with.