Meet Our Intern Ema Filipovska
This is the first post in a new series where we introduce you to some international students who’ve spent their internship building alongside our engineering team. First up: Ema, Macedonian, who wraps up her time at Sigasi at the end of this month.
When Ema Filipovska’s first pull request got merged into the Sigasi codebase, it wasn’t a huge feature. It didn’t feel small to her, though.
“It was a relatively small feature, but seeing something I had worked on become part of the actual product was a really rewarding moment,” she says. “It made the internship feel much more real and gave me confidence that I could contribute meaningfully to the team.”
Meet Ema
Ema is a computer science student at the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering in Skopje, North Macedonia. Away from her studies, there’s a good chance she’s got a fantasy novel in hand, is out cycling around her city, or is traveling and meeting people from different backgrounds and cultures.
What drew her to Sigasi in the first place was a chance to step outside the university bubble: “What attracted me to Sigasi was the opportunity to step outside the university environment and experience how software development works in a professional team. I wanted to challenge myself, learn from experienced developers, and contribute to something that is actually used by people.”
The project
Ema started where a lot of great internships start: smaller features and bug fixes, spread across both the frontend and backend. It’s unglamorous work, but it’s also the fastest way to get fluent in a real, established codebase.
From there, she moved on to something bigger — a mix of code refactoring and new UX/UI design. “I’m especially excited about this because it gives me the opportunity to combine the technical knowledge I’ve gained with a more creative side of development,” she says.
Asked to explain it to a non-engineer, she keeps it simple: “I would describe it as helping improve the software that Sigasi’s customers use. Some of my work involves fixing problems or adding smaller improvements, while my current task is focused on making part of the product cleaner, easier to maintain, and more intuitive to use.”
The experience
Ema expected the technical side of the internship to be the hard part. What actually caught her off guard was the team.
“The thing that surprised me most was how willing everyone was to help. I expected to have a lot of questions as an intern, but I was pleasantly surprised by how patient and encouraging everyone has been. I’ve never felt that asking a question was a burden, and that made it much easier to learn and become more confident.”
She describes the atmosphere at Sigasi as “friendly, welcoming, and collaborative,” with a good balance between focused independent work and people close by whenever she wants a second opinion. Her mentor, David Medina Ospina, has supported her since day one — encouraging her to ask questions and always happy to explain things — and she’s quick to credit the rest of the team too, for feedback and suggestions along the way.
She was also given real ownership, not just tasks to execute: “I would say quite a lot [of freedom]. My work is reviewed by a senior developer, but I still have the freedom to approach a task and solve it in the way I think is best. At the same time, I’m responsible for the code I produce. That mix of independence and guidance”, she says, “is what built her confidence.”
It shows in what she says she’s improved at most: working inside an established codebase, writing cleaner and more maintainable code, and — maybe the biggest one — collaborating with other developers. As she puts it, thinking back on the whole experience: “I’ve learned how essential teamwork is to the development process. Asking questions, discussing different approaches, and getting feedback from others can be just as important as the coding itself. Good teamwork is what turns individual contributions into a good product.”
The personal side
Software over hardware. Dark mode over light. Tea over coffee. An early starter who’d rather build something new than debug it.
Asked to sum up the whole internship in one word, Ema didn’t hesitate:
fulfilling
Her advice to the next student
“Don’t hesitate to apply. You don’t need to know everything before you start — an internship is precisely an opportunity to learn. Ask questions, be curious, and don’t be afraid to work on things that are outside your comfort zone.”
Среќен пат
Ema wraps up her internship with us at the end of this month, and we’re genuinely going to miss having her around.
#Internship #SoftwareEngineering #TeamCulture #EngineeringLife #StudentsInTech #Sigasi
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2026-08-20