DSP's Data Engineer Internship

At DSP, we offer a range of internship programmes designed to equip students and recent graduates with the skills and experience they need to succeed. Whether you're a university student, graduate, or simply eager to gain valuable work experience, our internships provide a platform for professional growth. If you're interested in the internship positions we have available, click here.

To give you a glimpse into life as a DSP intern, we invited two recent data engineering interns to share their experiences. In this blog, they'll offer insights into their projects, challenges, and the skills they've developed whilst at DSP. Ready to dive in? Let's hear from our interns...

James Ackerley

I started my DSP work experience as a university student, progressing into my third year studying biological sciences. My experience with data analysis was quite limited, apart from basic use in certain areas of my course. I came to DSP's AI and Innovation department hoping to expand my data analysis skill set whilst building my experience of working in a team setting. Over my two weeks at DSP, my data analysis skills grew substantially. I was tasked with creating a Microsoft Power BI presentation on a topic of my choice, allowing me to learn how to use the Power BI software. The data analysis team supported my learning, and I was assigned a member of the team as my 'buddy' who helped guide me through how to use the software and advised me on how to make a compelling presentation. This project was a great hands-on way to learn how to use the software, allowing me to explore its capabilities whilst introducing me to the format of data analysis presentations in a professional team setting.

I worked both in the DSP offices and from home, and we had daily meetings, allowing me to get to know the members individually on a professional and personal level. With their help, I created a presentation on my chosen topic of the FIFA World Cup and the tournament throughout its history.  I investigated key facts about each game, individual team performances, and top goal-scoring players, using the Power BI software to convert basic spreadsheet data into interesting, dynamic visuals that could be used to explore the data in an engaging way. In making my presentation, with help from my assigned buddy, I learnt about the concepts of key and fact data as well as the use of measures and coding to help make this part of analysing the data and making the presentation visuals function.

My work experience at DSP has been made thoroughly enjoyable by the AI and Innovation team, who were welcoming and created a friendly and helpful mentoring atmosphere. They assisted in growing my data analysis and presenting skills, whilst I learnt how they worked as an effective, forward-focused unit. I would highly recommend this work experience to others who would like to learn more about data analysis and how it is applied in a real-world setting.

Ryder Nayak

The DSP offices are in the heart of the City of London and it was great fun to travel with all the busy commuters during rush hour (even if I didn't get a seat!). I arrived at a sleek, glass-fronted building next to the red wrought iron of the iconic Leadenhall Market. It was great to be in the square mile and feel part of the hustle of the City of London's business district. On my first day, I was met by Matty Elliott, one of DSP's Data Analytics Engineers. He would be my work experience buddy for the next two weeks, my mentor for learning Power BI and there to answer all my questions - from how to fix bugs, to submitting an expense claim. I later learned that Matty had started as an intern like me, and it was inspiring to know that he had progressed to a Data Analytics Engineer, all at DSP.

Max Storr-Vijay, DSP's Data Team Lead, gave me my objective. He challenged me to create an Azure Power BI report from scratch and use it to present data analysis to the team on the last day. I accepted the challenge despite not quite knowing how I was going to do it!

Thankfully, I could choose the data for the report. I chose F1, a subject that really interests me. I used Power BI to dig into the data, analyse dimensions like driver performance, team standings, and track statistics, and work out how to present insights in a visually engaging way. I started by gathering and cleaning the data to make sure it was accurate, which was honestly more challenging than I expected. Once the data was ready, I built visualisations that allowed users of my report to explore how factors like qualifying positions and pit stop times affect race outcomes or which tracks certain drivers excel on. In case you were wondering what the data says about who the best driver is… it's Lewis Hamilton.

This project helped me build my technical skills in data analysis, but more importantly, it showed me how exciting it can be to use data to solve real-world problems.

Furthermore, I met with a lot of problems when joining up the data from different tables, as the relationships were extremely confusing and spread across 13 tables. To produce one of the visuals, I had to create a new key to connect two of the tables. Another problem I had was grasping the Power BI programming language called "DAX" and, in particular, creating measures. However, my buddy Matty helped me through, and it was incredibly enriching to overcome complicated problems.

During my time, I met many people from other teams like Sales and Finance, and it was nice to meet Simon Goodenough, the CEO, and Phil Brown, the CTO.
At the end of the two weeks, I presented this report to the team and was proud to receive encouraging feedback. I feel like this is the first step in my career as a Data Engineer.

I want to thank Matty for being a great work experience buddy and helping me with the data and the DAX. I would also like to thank Max, Pujitha, Aidan, Chiedozie, and my fellow intern James Ackerley for making me feel part of the team. 

Apply for an Internship

If you would like to join the team or find out more about our internship opportunities, click here.