Sample cover letter for Internship position at MongoDB

Dear <Recipient>, 

I am an undergraduate computer science student at <University>. I am writing to you to express my interest in MongoDB’s Summer 2016 Software Engineering internship. Throughout my academic and professional careers, I have always had a driving interest in doing innovative things with data. While my professional history has lied mostly in web development, my passion for finding the simplest possible solution to a problem has given me a deep interest in document-oriented databases. I believe such systems (and MongoDB in particular) will be the primary enabling technologies for the Internet of Things, electronic health records, and their point of intersection. This point is where most of my current research focus lies, and it has led me to discover the potential that schemaless databases hold for the future. 

Given my interests, it should be evident that an internship with MongoDB would be an invaluable experience for me. Even among NoSQL databases, the unique features of MongoDB make it ideal for my study and use. Modern EHRs are huge systems which require a great degree of horizontal scalability to operate efficiently. MongoDB’s combination of sharding and replication, as well, is a brilliant approach to scaling huge datasets. The schemaless nature of MongoDB is of critical importance in ensuring that the capabilities of these systems are able to grow organically. MongoDB is simply the ideal solution to managing big data in many cases, and, according to my own research, this is particularly true in regards to IoT-enabled EHRs. 

While I would clearly benefit greatly from an internship with MongoDB, I have much to offer your team as well. I have an entrepreneurial spirit, an innate crave to find the optimal solution to any given problem, and experience with big software repositories. I’ve worked with C++ and Python (my personal favorites) as well as Java and JavaScript. During my time at <Company> I was responsible for database migrations and application development, but, after examining our existing systems and finding several productivity clogs, I initiated a workflow overhaul that has improved efficiency by 20-30%. Further, I have academic experience in database systems, low-level systems software, and algorithms used across computer science disciplines, including graph traversal, hashing, trees, and sorting. 

As the nature of data changes with technological advancement, it is necessary to reevaluate current solutions and determine whether there is a better way of doing things. After analyzing DoubleClick, MongoDB’s founders had to perform this exact type of analysis in order to rethink big datasets. It is clear to me that the drive to innovate is a central component of the MongoDB philosophy. I would find immense personal and professional benefit in working to keep MongoDB on the cutting edge of what data can do, and I believe my interests and skills make me the ideal candidate for the role. I would love to talk to you more about the position. Thank you for taking me into consideration. I look forward to speaking with you soon (and hopefully doing some NYC sightseeing with the team). 

Best regards, 

<Name>

<Phone number>

<Email>