Developing Technical Expertise and Soft Skills for Future in Tech Industry
With a goal of becoming a software engineer, Yanyan Chen, MS’24, information systems, has developed technical expertise, completed a co-op at IpserLab, and became more resilient as a Northeastern graduate student.
Yanyan Chen, MS’24, information systems, has seamlessly blended technical knowledge with hands-on experience to pursue her dream of becoming a skilled software engineer. After earning an undergraduate engineering degree in China, she began her professional journey as a system operation and maintenance engineer at China Telecom.
During that time, she realized she wanted to deepen her expertise and gain global exposure, so she began a search of graduate programs. She selected Northeastern because of its strong alumni employment rate and focus on experiential learning. As a Northeastern student, she discovered the curriculum, which emphasized practical skills and cutting-edge technologies like Java, React, object-oriented design, and cloud computing, aligned with her career aspirations.
“The courses are designed to integrate theory with real-world application, preparing us for the challenges of the industry,” Chen says. Classes like Web Design and User Experience Engineering.
Chen’s co-op experience at IpserLab proved transformative. Her role as a software engineer enabled her to apply classroom learning to real-world scenarios. She developed a quiz lead generation tool to enhance user interfaces and co-developed an analytics module to improve engagement tracking. These projects bolstered her expertise in full-stack development and scalable solutions, preparing her to tackle complex challenges in her future career.
At Northeastern, Chen participated in an event organized by Rewrite the Code, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting women in coding. Collaborating with a diverse team, she contributed to building a mentorship matching platform designed to connect aspiring female developers with experienced professionals.
Chen also worked on innovative class projects like Campus Eats, a meal-ordering platform for enterprises, and Surf Spotter, a full-stack website for surfers to explore and rate surfing spots. In Campus Eats, she overcame performance challenges by implementing Redis caching and optimizing database queries. For Surf Spotter, she integrated interactive maps using the MapBox API and managed team collaboration effectively through tools like Git.
These projects highlighted her technical software skills, proficiency and critical thinking skills.
Chen’s goal is to specialize in backend systems and scalable architecture, with a long-term plan to contribute to innovative projects in cloud computing and information systems.
“Northeastern has equipped me with both technical expertise and the resilience to succeed in the tech industry,” Chen says.