Software and Security: An Internship with Google

ALBANY, N.Y, (July 15, 2021) — For Raphael Karger, spending the summer writing code and software design documents is a step toward his career goal of becoming a security engineer.

A senior digital forensics and cybersecurity major in the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity, Karger is doing a remote internship with Google this summer. It’s challenging, forcing him to “think outside the box,” he said.

Karger began his internship June 1 and will continue right up to the start of the fall semester. In broad terms his work involves developing software and methods to protect security for large-scale infrastructure, but because of the proprietary nature of the project, he can’t provide specific details.

“I am given ambiguous problems that require me to research and implement novel solutions,” he explained. “I had to learn a lot about tools and technologies used internally. There was no outside documentation. I had to reach out to people on different teams and read codebases relevant to my project.”

It’s a lot of work, but Google makes sure to add both education and fun for its interns, offering speakers from company executives to industry leaders, and programs including cooking, music and networking with other interns. Karger said he participates in most of the events offered. “My favorite one was a virtual concert night in Iceland where an indie-folk Icelandic artist was telling us about Icelandic history and played us folk songs,” he said.

At UAlbany, Karger is involved in the Cyber Defense Organization (CDO), which he calls a great place to learn more about cybersecurity: “If you have any interest in getting into the field I would highly suggest joining CDO.”

As far as his career goals, Karger said security engineering is a broad and dynamic field. “Part of the appeal for me is doing work ranging from consulting to designing and writing security software,” he said. At Google, he said he’s learned a tremendous amount about software engineering, and best practices for large corporations.

“I have had an amazing time and have met knowledgeable and welcoming people,” he said, adding — in proprietary code — “Shout out to my Google mentors E, S, P, and T!”