At Praetorian, we’ve never asked interns to file or fetch coffee. How boring would that be, and what a waste of curiosity and talent! Instead, we focus on providing actual work experience and teaching hard skills our interns can’t learn in a classroom. In fact, we go above and beyond to give our interns practical experience, and consequently, they witness how professionals balance technical realities with business needs. One 2022 intern even observed, “I think what surprised me the most was that there is no difference between me and a full-time engineer.” Students who complete our internship program hit the ground running after graduation, because they’ve gained an understanding of how cybersecurity actually works in the real world.
Professional Selection Process for Professional Work
Praetorian’s job interview process is challenging–everyone completes a technical challenge plus three tough lab station interviews! Our internship program is no less selective, because our interns work on actual projects with top tier engineers across cybersecurity disciplines. We know the work they perform will help real clients solve their hardest security challenges, and we stake our reputation on our interns being in the same tier as our staff. This leads to unique experiences on real-world problems, and accolades like this one from a Senior Security Engineer:
Just wanted to give a shoutout to our interns for an outstanding job on their first engagement. With four extra sets of eyes, we were able to find many subtle issues with the customer’s environment that probably would have gone unnoticed otherwise. Great job guys, and welcome to Praetorian!
A Peek into Summer 2022
From the hundreds of applications we received, we hired four interns for Summer 2022. Each has made a name for themself. They completed our lab stations in record time–like serious record-breaking time, some way faster than current employees! As we near the end of this year’s internship program, I had the chance to meet with them and discuss what it’s like to intern at Praetorian. Here is a snapshot of their internship experience, in their own words:
2022 Intern Alma Maters
College recruiting is a significant part of our intern hiring process. We particularly enjoy working with colleges that have strong CS programs and teach outside of the basic cybersecurity classes. They tend to have students who can think critically and who want to dig into the real challenges we try to solve every day. This year’s class of interns represents three of these impressive programs.
Georgia Institute of Technology:
Our relationship with GT brought us an intern that finished an interview challenge in record time! We have sponsored hackathons and plan to continue building our relationship with GT. We hope to see alumni join Praetorian in the near future, as well.
Carnegie Mellon University:
CMU is well known as one of the number one Computer Science programs with a robust focus on cybersecurity. They offer classes focused on software reverse engineering, which was abundantly apparent in our CMU intern’s work over the Summer. Praetorian is invested in strengthening our relationship with this program, and plans to make a visit this fall! We are proud to have alumni from CMU working at Praetorian, too.
The University of Texas at Austin:
Two of our interns will graduate early next year from this school right down the street from Praetorian’s headquarters! It’s not a surprise that one of our interns is a double major in Mathematics and Computer Science. Expect to see a few alumni from Praetorian presenting at a tech talk this fall.
Current students of these types of programs are excellent candidates for internships at Praetorian and, often, for jobs once they are alumni. We look forward to attending career fairs, sponsoring hackathons, and participating in tech talks with our strong academic partners.
Be sure to read our interns’ recent blog post on their Summer research!
