Neha Moolchandani at AmazonCuriosity, resilience and perseverance are the words that guide the life of Neha Moolchandani, a senior at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Guided by these values, Moolchandani was selected for Amazon’s prestigious summer internship program.
“At Amazon, I was fortunate to be in an environment with endless learning possibilities that expanded my knowledge and skills,” said Moolchandani, a Nashville, Tenn., native. “It was truly fulfilling to cultivate my knowledge in alignment with my aspirations.”
According to her, the best thing about working at Amazon was “whatever I craved for, I could learn,” she said.
“For example, if one day I wanted to learn about machine learning, I could just go, network and learn about it,” said Moolchandani, who is majoring in computer science in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences. “If I was curious about robotics and the systems, I could go tour a robotics facility and chat with the developers about them. Amazon actively fosters integration among diverse groups of people — an aspect I truly appreciated.”
Technology and Moolchandani: Made for each other
Moolchandani, an Honors College student, came to UAB on the pre-medical track. Soon she discovered she was passionate about technology, robotics, machine learning and AI, and she switched her major to computer science. To further feed her curiosity and love for learning, she is minoring in mathematics and Collat School of Business’ information systems.
Out of enthusiasm for the tech industry, Moolchandani was dedicated to finding the best computer science internship to grow as a leader and professional. She applied to many internships and received an offer from Amazon, among four other big tech companies. After going through five interviews at Amazon, she was selected for their prestigious summer internship program.
“I enjoy challenges, going out of my comfort zone and developing my professional skills,” Moolchandani said. “I knew I had to be resilient to ensure I found the right fit for me at this critical time in my career, so I submitted dozens of applications. When I received the offer from Amazon, I was deeply grateful.”
Moolchandani’s role at Amazon
Moolchandani was an operations manager for a given facility, analyzing data, managing projects, formulating business development strategies, and programming applications to ensure efficiency and long-term success. Her main project was implementing electronic automation. In just 10 weeks, she not only developed and implemented the project, but also took initiatives on five other projects, saving $100,000 in total for the facility.
Throughout the internship, she focused on evaluating Delivery Estimation Accuracy metrics and ensuring each week orders were making it to the customer on time with few to no hiccups.
“Amazon is very customer-obsessed,” she said. “If the customer says they want the package tomorrow, we will do everything to make sure they get it. The most important thing for Amazon is its delivery-estimate accuracy, which I tracked using hundreds of metrics to ensure packages were delivered on the promised date and time.”
Her internship concluded with a final presentation with the senior leadership, who applauded Moolchandani’s curiosity, resilience and diligence.
“I was honored to hear remarks about how I have set the bar high for interns at Amazon and have accomplished their goals in my brief time with them,” Moolchandani said. “I fit well into the Amazon culture and would love to work with them full time after graduation.”
Moolchandani advises students to build relationships with people, be humble and kind, and most importantly, come to work each day with a positive attitude.
“I love getting to know people in all sorts of fields. These relationships are the reason I was able to accomplish so much in such a short amount of time. Communication and going above and beyond the expectations established me as a trustworthy professional,” she said.
Previously, Moolchandani worked at Nashville’s HCA Healthcare as a corporate data architect intern, at Microsoft as a program coach and at Birmingham’s NaphCare as a software development intern, contributing to her selection as an Amazon intern.
Moolchandani and UAB
Moolchandani says she chose UAB because of its diversity, which includes skills and education disciplines. “You can think about UAB through any lens, and it is diverse,” she said.
Despite her transition from pre-med to computer science in her freshman year, she stayed at UAB because of the warmth and community she felt.
“I think what is special about UAB is the faculty who care about students and our success,” Moolchandani said. “There is a certain warmth you feel when you walk on campus knowing that people care about you.”
Moolchandani was also driven by the forward-thinking strategies of UAB as an institution, she says.
“It’s exciting to watch UAB on the horizon of becoming the STEM school of the South, proving its potential beyond health and medicine,” she said. “With a new Altec/Styslinger Genomic Medicine and Data Sciences Building and the Science and Engineering Complex, I am inspired by UAB’s commitment to STEM development in our region, and that’s why I stayed at UAB.”
Moolchandani is a leader on UAB’s campus — her most notable roles include president of the Society for Women Engineers at the School of Engineering, co-founder of Association for Computing Machinery, student adviser for computer science, and Honors and CAS ambassador. In the fall, she will be a teacher’s assistant for Computer Science Data Structures and Algorithms and a Data Science intern at the Magic City Data Collective.