Pushing the Right Buttons

Growing up curious about computers and how their applications worked, Scott Salerno ’20 naturally searched out programs with high post-graduate job offer rates when looking at colleges. After he visited Lebanon Valley College and discovered the computer & data science major, something clicked. 

He added a second major in digital communications with a concentration in programming as a sophomore, building the right combination of skills to land a coveted paid summer internship with United Parcel Service.

There, Salerno worked as an automation developer in the quality assurance department, where he wrote automation test scripts to test graphical and application program interface features on internal applications. Based in an agile development environment, he used Google cloud and data studio to write SQL queries to test his assigned tasks. He also gained experience with IBM Watson and IBM Watson Studio to help develop a machine learning algorithm using logistic regression for visual recognition software.

“Even though I was in the Quality Assurance Testing field, I used my software development skills in multiple areas,” he said. “I enjoyed learning about the Development Operations field and how source code management and collaboration is supported between many different teams working on the same project.”

Salerno credits improved time management and leadership skills as two of the biggest takeaways from the internship. He served as a project lead on an internship project that required strong cooperation.

“That experience enabled me to understand better how to interact with others, elicit the best of their abilities, and delegate tasks based on these abilities,” he said.

Along with learning at his internship, Salerno even taught his co-workers about a new product he had previously used at LVC.

“My classes at LVC helped me enter my internship with more experience than the company had anticipated,” he said. “I actually helped teach and learn alongside my co-workers as they just started using Docker in their DevOps Library.”

After LVC, Salerno hopes to work in software development, machine learning, or artificial intelligence.