Every great career starts with an opportunity to grow. At RIVA, we believe that opportunity should come with real work, real responsibility, and the chance to make an impact.
That’s the idea behind RIVA’s Summer Internship Program, an 11-week experience designed to give students and emerging professionals hands-on exposure to the work happening across our company while gaining meaningful experience in their chosen fields. Throughout the summer, interns work alongside experienced colleagues who mentor, challenge, and create opportunities for them to contribute.
This summer’s interns joined teams across Corporate Operations, Client Delivery, Solutions, and Finance & Accounting, where they contributed to projects, learned from RIVA leaders and mentors, and experienced firsthand what it means to be part of the Herd.
And at the end of the summer, they had the opportunity to share their work and experience.
Learning by Doing
From day one, RIVA interns are treated as members of the team.That means more than sitting in on meetings or observing from the sidelines. Our interns take ownership of assignments, collaborate across departments, learn new technologies and processes, and contribute to work that helps RIVA and our customers move forward. This summer, that took four very different directions:
Aerin Taylor, Corporate Operations, brought her background in operations and communications into a new environment while learning how a growing government contractor operates. Her work spanned quality and governance, operational reporting, budgeting, and process improvement. She coordinated CMMI audit activities, developed and refined standard operating procedures, supported monthly budget close and review activities, and maintained operational metrics. Along the way, she also explored how AI could make recurring work more efficient, using it to support meeting recaps, monthly reporting, budget packages, and executive materials while maintaining human review throughout the process.
Ashley Younts, Client Delivery, started the summer expecting to work primarily behind the scenes. Instead, she found opportunities to improve the systems and processes RIVA teams use every day. She helped overhaul RIVA’s Project Management Handbook, reducing it from more than 50 pages to approximately 21 while working across departments to make the resource easier for PMs to use and maintain. She also led the migration of Delivery content from an outdated SharePoint environment, supported RIVA’s transition to a new applicant tracking system, and developed AI-enabled automation to speed up manual processes. Ashley also got a firsthand look at how that work connects to our customers. For one of RIVA’s teams, she created a data visualization comparing changes in website engagement and search behavior across reporting periods. The work was well received enough that she was asked to repeat the analysis for the next reporting period.
Kushaan Saran, Finance & Accounting, came to RIVA looking to translate what he was learning as a finance student into real-world experience. Over the summer, he gained hands-on exposure to government contracting accounting and FAR requirements while supporting many of the financial processes that keep the business moving. His work included payroll processing, 401(k) reporting, reconciliations, cash-flow monitoring, journal entries, monthly close, and external audit support. He also tracked monthly and year-to-date financial trends for project reporting and analyzed overhead-to-revenue ratios to help monitor cost patterns over time. The experience gave him a firsthand understanding of how financial operations, compliance, and reporting support successful government contracting.
Dev Bhatia, Solutions IT, set out to build his skills in AI, AWS, cloud computing, and AI-assisted development and spent the summer putting those technologies to work. Dev contributed to several hands-on AI and cloud initiatives, building tools to support federal opportunity research, advancing the integration of generative AI into RIVA solutions, and helping deploy an internal application in AWS. Through that work, he gained practical experience taking AI concepts beyond experimentation and into functional, real-world applications.
Different teams. Different skill sets. Different projects. But the same idea: give interns meaningful work and the support to run with it.
From Contribution to Presentation
The 11-week experience culminated in Intern Presentation Day, when our interns shared their work with leaders, mentors, and colleagues from across RIVA.
Each intern walked the Herd through what they expected coming into the program, what they actually experienced, the projects they contributed to, the skills they developed, and the lessons they’ll carry forward.
Across the presentations, a few lessons came through again and again: ask questions, stay curious, build relationships, understand the “why” behind the work, and don’t be afraid to take ownership. Those takeaways reflect what the program is designed to create, not just stronger technical and professional skills, but the confidence to contribute, learn from others, and keep growing long after the internship ends.
That reflection is an important part of the experience. Presenting their work challenges interns to connect individual assignments to a larger outcome and articulate not only what they did, but why it mattered. And for the rest of RIVA, Intern Presentation Day provides an opportunity to see the program through their eyes. The presentations highlighted technical and professional growth, but they also surfaced something equally important: the relationships built along the way.
Building Skills and Community
An internship should help someone understand what they might want to do next. But we also want our interns to understand the kind of workplace in which they want to do it.
RIVA’s remote-first environment makes intentional connection especially important. Throughout the summer, interns have opportunities to meet employees beyond their immediate teams, participate in company events, connect with mentors, ask questions, and experience the culture that keeps the Herd connected.
Those moments mattered. Interns highlighted everything from mentorship and Thursday office hours to team happy hours, company activities, Slack communities, and simply getting to know colleagues outside of day-to-day work.
Because professional growth doesn’t happen through assignments alone. It happens through the people who answer questions, share what they know, challenge someone to try something new, and create room for them to contribute.
That’s what we want RIVA’s Summer Internship Program to provide.
Growing the Herd
Great organizations don’t just recruit talent, they help develop it. By giving students and emerging professionals the opportunity to contribute, learn, and grow, we’re investing in the future of our industry and strengthening the communities we serve. Because every member of the Herd starts somewhere, we’re proud to help the next generation take that first step.
Know a Future RIVA Intern?
We’re always looking ahead to the next group of talented students and emerging professionals ready to learn, contribute, and grow. If you know someone who would thrive in RIVA’s collaborative, people-first culture and wants the opportunity to gain hands-on experience while contributing to meaningful work, we’d love to meet them.
Reach out to Director of People and Culture Mimi Shieh to learn more about RIVA’s Summer Internship Program and future opportunities to join the Herd.
