Meet Anisha Jain, a current student in the MS in Engineering Management program, where she’s diving deep into the innovation and design technical track with her sights set on a career in product management. This past summer, Anisha landed an internship at Amazon as a Product Manager Technical (External Services), where she put her classroom knowledge to the test in one of the world’s most fast-paced tech environments. We caught up with Anisha to hear how her time at Hopkins prepared her for the role—and what she took away from her experience at Amazon.
Why did you decide to pursue an MSEM degree?
Before MSEM, I was working as a data analyst in corporate strategy in a fintech company and my job was to share insights about customer health and retention with the stakeholders. I realized that I wanted to be a part of implementing these insights for greater impact, and product management felt like the perfect way to do it. However, I also understood that “the state of art is different the state of practice,” and I needed to learn about the best practices to build products and solve problems before moving to this role. Since I was clear I wanted to stay in tech, I did not want to lose my tech focus and the MSEM degree was a perfect blend of upskilling both my management and technical skills.
What is your technical concentration, and why did you choose it?
My technical concentration is Innovation and Design. I wanted to focus on building meaningful products, and this concentration gave me the most flexibility to choose the right subjects for me. My technical subjects ranged from innovation and design, where we created a product for jHub with a business plan and working prototype; the course Action Lab, where I learnt more about hardware prototyping; and Service API Design, where I made an end-to-end SaaS product in Java.
What were your responsibilities in your role as a product manger intern in Identity and Access Management at Amazon?
My final deliverable is to propose a feature by using the Amazon “working backwards” philosophy. I have been provided a problem statement, and I need to validate it by talking to customers, developers, and other stakeholders. I also need to pitch different solutions and come up with a roadmap in consensus with the leadership to deliver one feature that solves the given problem. I would then need to work on this feature, talking to customers to understand their needs, develop UX and architecture in collaboration with other teams.
What are you learning from your internship experience?
When I worked on projects in MSEM, there were few constraints related to time and budget. However, in the real environment, not only do we need to build products with value, but they also need to be shipped quick and make money even quicker. I hope to learn to cope with these pressures and keep up expectations. Moreover, I am excited to learn about different technologies and about the cybersecurity space through the course of this internship.
What are your goals after graduation and how might this internship provide you with the experience necessary to achieve those goals?
My goal is to become a product manager, and this internship gives me the experience to see how things work in big tech companies. Being a part of meetings that discuss the long-term vision, product roadmaps, and monthly metrics has given me exposure to what product managers actually do. I also got the chance to see a big product launch, and how products are shipped at scale.