“It really helped me kickstart my journey,” he said. “I loved what I was learning. It allowed me to focus so much more and allowed me to delve into the topic so much more.”
Upon graduation from Champlain, Bérubé won the Computer Science and Mathematics Award given to the student in the program with the highest grades. He also secured an entrance scholarship to the Concordia University engineering faculty from Hydro-Quebec.
During his bachelor’s degree, went on to secure a Desdowd Scholarship of excellence in Quebec in 2018 and a Merit Scholarship in Information Sciences, Computer Engineering and Construction of Computers, and Electrical, Electronic and Communications Engineering from Concordia in 2021.
During the co-op part of his degree, Bérubé completed five-month internships at Scigilian Software Inc., INEAT Group and Microsoft. After Concordia, Bérubé decided to take on one last internship, applying to big tech companies to try and get a foot in the door.
“I didn’t have anything to lose really,” he said. “I took a gamble and it paid off.”
After securing an internship working as a production engineer at Shopify for eight months, he secured a permanent, full-time job as an infrastructure engineer in 2021. In February 2024, he was promoted to the role of senior infrastructure engineer.
Bérubé’s advice for current students and recent graduates: “For computer science students, really grab as many internships are you can, it will be the huge differentiator. They are worth it. If you go to university after or try to get a job, for me it was a world of difference. Especially for big tech, it can be intimidating to get in; if you want to apply to Facebook or Google, just apply. You never know what’s going to happen.”
