I got a chance to work at CrowdStrike over the summer as an Engineering Intern and continued for another five months until December 2025. It's been more than two months since I wrapped up my co-op, and I've had some time to reflect on what made the experience meaningful.
This isn't a "day in the life" post. I want to share the things I learned, the conversations that stuck with me, and some honest advice for incoming interns.
1. Understand the Product. Understand the Scale.
CrowdStrike operates at a massive scale. Millions of endpoints, enterprise customers across every industry, and a platform that security teams depend on every single day. When you join, it's easy to get tunnel vision on your tickets and your sprint board. Don't.
Take the time to understand what CrowdStrike actually does and who you're building for. Use the product. Read the docs. Sit in on customer demos if you can. There are a lot of developers out there, but not a lot of people who genuinely care about the product they're building. Be someone who cares. It changes the way you write code, the questions you ask in meetings, and the features you push for.
When you understand the "why" behind what you're building, the "how" becomes a lot more intentional.
2. Explore the Codebase. Then Let AI Accelerate You.
When I started my internship, coding agents were still being introduced to the world. Over the course of my time there, I witnessed the entire transition from Cline and Roo Code to Claude Code (the final boss, if you ask me).
Before AI Agents
During my initial days, and honestly anytime I wasn't actively working on a task, I was deep inside CrowdStrike's codebase. Searching through how the data model worked, how auth was implemented, and how custom components were built. I spent countless hours just figuring things out. And I loved it. That process of digging through unfamiliar code, getting confused, and then slowly building a mental model? That's where the real understanding came from. And trust me, there's a lot of crazy engineering at work in Crowdstrike. You'll enjoy it.
After AI Agents
The very first thing I used a coding agent for was: "Help me understand how auth is working in this repo."
Roo and Cline weren't always fast or accurate, but they sped up the process significantly. What used to take me an hour to trace through the codebase now took about 15 minutes. On top of that, CrowdStrike's frontend stack included Ember.js, a framework I had zero experience with. Working alongside a coding agent made picking up Ember's conventions and patterns much more approachable.
My Advice
Explore the code. Explore how things are built. Ask more and more questions. By the time you start your internship, you'll be fortunate enough to have access to even better models, which will not only make you faster at understanding the codebase but also help you build features end-to-end.
But here's the important part: don't substitute the hard learning with AI. Use AI to accelerate your understanding, not to skip it. There's a difference between asking an agent to explain a pattern to you and asking it to just write the code so you can move on. The first makes you a better engineer. The second just makes you faster temporarily. The goal here is to become a good developer and not a shallow one.
One thing that one of the senior engineers told me very early on that stuck with me: "You're not being judged on how many tasks you deliver, but on how good an engineer you are and how well you can adapt to the complexities of CrowdStrike."
That reframed everything for me.
3. Talk to People. Not "Network". Talk.
I don't love the word "networking." It doesn't capture the intricacies of genuine human connection. It makes conversations feel transactional, like you're collecting LinkedIn contacts instead of actually getting to know someone.
So here's what I'd say instead: talk to your peers. Talk to your fellow interns. Talk to your manager, your manager's manager, people from University Relations, and people from teams you might never work with directly. There is so much to learn from the people around you, and you'll be surprised by what you pick up when you approach conversations with an open mind and no agenda.
Something I keep hearing a lot these days: "This industry is smaller than you think. There's a good chance you'll cross paths again with the people you're working alongside today."
That turned out to be true more than once.
If you're an introvert, here's a simple framework: prepare a little before each 1:1 or coffee chat. Ask them about their day. Ask them about their work and what they're excited about. Then ask if they have any advice for making the most of the internship. That's it. You don't need to be the most charismatic person in the room. You just need to be genuinely curious.
4. Be Easy to Work With
One piece of feedback I kept getting during my time there was that I'm "easy to work with." I appreciated hearing it, but I never fully understood what it meant until I started paying attention. Being technically strong is great. Being technically strong and easy to collaborate with? That's what makes people want to work with you again.
What does "easy to work with" actually look like? It means being responsive and communicative. If you're stuck, say so early instead of spinning for hours in silence. If someone gives you feedback, take it without getting defensive. If a teammate needs help, offer it even when it's not your task. Follow through on what you say you'll do.
But there's another side to this: require less hand-holding. Your manager and your team are busy. They're happy to help you, but they also need to see that you can take a problem and run with it. Before you ask a question, spend real time trying to figure it out yourself. When you do ask, come with context: "Here's what I tried, here's where I'm stuck, here's what I think the issue might be." That's a very different conversation than "This isn't working, what do I do?"
The goal is to show that you're someone who can be given a task and trusted to figure it out, ask the right questions when needed, and come back with something solid. That's what turns an internship into a return offer. Not just delivering work, but making your team feel confident that you can operate independently.
5. Compete at the Highest Level
Don't coast. An internship is a finite window of time, and the energy you bring to it compounds.
Keep improving. Keep building. Keep thinking about what the next level looks like for you. Whether that's shipping a feature that pushes your technical skills, learning a new part of the stack, or putting yourself in rooms where you're the least experienced person, treat every week like it matters because it does.
The best interns I saw weren't necessarily the most experienced ones. They were the ones who showed up every day with an intensity to grow and a refusal to settle for "good enough."
And one small shift that goes a long way: remove "I don't know" from your vocabulary. Replace it with "I can figure it out". That one change in how you talk to yourself and your team signals confidence, curiosity, and ownership. People notice it.
If there's one thing I'd leave you with: take on the hardest challenges you can find. Put in the effort. Show up every day. Ask for help from your peers when you need it. And if you fail? It really isn't failure. It's the invaluable learning you get from competing at the highest level.
Final Thoughts
I had a great time working at CrowdStrike. It pushed me technically, gave me exposure to problems at a scale I hadn't worked at before, and connected me with people I genuinely respect. None of it would have been possible without my fellow interns, my managers, and the peers who made every day better.
To the next batch of interns: you're walking into something good. You'll probably feel like you don't belong at some point. Everyone does. That feeling doesn't mean you're not ready. It means you're in the right room. Make the most of it.
(Picture from Intern Conference in Virginia last year.)
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Go CrowdStrikers! 🚀