What I learned from being a part of the Ignite Program at New Relic

In July 2022, I joined the New Relic Ignite Program—an incubator team designed to provide early career engineers with additional support and coaching.  I truly enjoyed my time in the program and can confidently say it's an incredible opportunity for early career engineers.

As part of the Ignite Program, participants start as Associate Software Engineers. Associate Engineers can stay in the program for two to six months, rotating among different teams. Once they find a good match with a team, they're placed on that team and promoted to Software Engineer I. My experience lasted five months, during which I had the opportunity to take part in several rotations and gain valuable knowledge in a variety of areas. After completing the program, I transitioned to my new team.

If you're thinking about the program, I'd like to share my experience and provide more insight into this great opportunity New Relic offers early career engineers. In this blog post, I’ll cover the two most essential things I learned during my time in the Ignite Program.

Adapt to new technologies

As an engineer, staying up to date with new technologies and gaining proficiency in relevant programming languages, frameworks, and tools is essential. The Ignite Program provided me with the opportunity to work on various teams, giving me the chance to become well-rounded and versatile. For example, working on the frontend team allowed me to gain experience with client-side technologies such as React. And working on the infrastructure team exposed me to the challenges of building and maintaining scalable and reliable systems. I learned the importance of careful planning and design and the need for robust monitoring and testing. 

I also worked on the Kafka team, where I worked with the Kafka messaging system. These experiences helped me discover the inner workings of New Relic and become comfortable with the multiple tools contained within the product.

Work together with fellow engineers to solve problems

As part of the program, I received guidance and mentorship from experienced engineers and learned how they approach and solve problems. They helped me navigate the challenges of doing a team rotation and provided valuable support.

Also, I had the chance to do a lot of pair programming with engineers on the current rotations. Through pair programming, I contributed effectively to the team and learned from my partner's ideas and approaches to problem-solving. Actively reviewing and discussing code with another programmer can help develop a deeper understanding of the code, and this contributed to my overall growth in the Ignite Program.

I truly enjoyed my time in the Ignite Program. I had the chance to meet and work with amazing people while receiving unparalleled support and mentorship. The knowledge and experience I gained were invaluable.

I can confidently say that the Ignite Program is an incredible opportunity for early career engineers and recommend applying if you're interested!