Meet Danielle Shokrian
Danielle is a student in Flatiron’s Accelerated AI Engineering Immersive program and an AI Apprentice at Khaite, a luxury fashion brand in New York City. She is currently working on AI and automation, building apps that help streamline workflows and processes.
In her interview, she shares her journey from a music education background through Flatiron School’s programs, describing how she has quickly made an impact at Khaite by building automated tools that save teams significant time, and reflecting on the professional growth, technical skills, and creative problem-solving she has developed along the way.
Snapshot
Current Job Title: AI Apprentice
Current Employer: Khaite
Past Employers: Metropolitan Opera
GitHub: https://github.com/danielleshokrian
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-shokrian-36567022a/
Technical/Professional Skills: Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Flask, PostgreSQL, Docker, Anthropic API, OpenAI API, and modern deployment tools.
What They’re Learning: “I’m learning so much about all the different things that come with being at a company, like understanding all the ins and outs that’s not just not coding. It’s about really understanding the problems of the company and finding innovative ways to make solutions for them.”
Favorite Part of Your Job: “Building apps and tools that can improve workflows and change how the company does things in a way that’s helpful for them.”
Q&A Transcript
- Can you tell us a little about yourself? (Your name, background/experience, your Flatiron program, and what you’re working on, etc.)
- My name is Danielle Shokrian. I am in the apprenticeship program at the Flatiron School for Accelerated AI. I found out about this program because I recently completed the Flatiron Software Engineering certificate program. It gave me so much experience with learning how to code. I really fell in love with software engineering, and I have a unique background. Before I completed the software engineering program, I graduated from my undergrad program in music education. Although I do love music, I was taking some IT classes on the side and I really felt like I wanted to dive more into that. I saw this opportunity at the Flatiron School, and I figured it was perfect to get more experience in software engineering without necessarily paying for another four years of school. Through that certificate program, I learned so much. Nowadays, there’s just so much with AI, and I wanted to become even more comfortable learning how to engineer with it. The apprenticeship gave me an opportunity to actually work with an employer. Right now, I’m doing AI and automations at the company Khaite in New York City. It’s been so rewarding to be in person and actually have my skills be useful to different teams at the company. I’m learning so much about all the different things that come with being at a company, like understanding all the ins and outs that’s not just not coding. It’s about really understanding the problems of the company and finding innovative ways to make solutions for them.
- Can you tell us a little bit more about Khaite and what your role is there?
- Khaite is a luxury clothing store in New York City. Right now, I’m working on AI and automation. A lot of tedious tasks that team members there have to do daily, like shipping reports and a lot of data analytics for the clothes that they sell. I’ve turned a lot of that into automated processes that happen on a weekly basis. So far, I’ve built a couple of different applications that they find really helpful and that save them a lot of time. I’ve only been there for about two weeks, but it’s been a really supportive environment and I’m really excited to continue building more features for them. I’ve developed a couple of different apps that have made those tedious workflows automated, and it’s been really helpful for them. They’ve told me that they’ve saved so much time with the different apps that I’ve built. It shows the power of AI and the people who are able to engineer that AI.
- How have your first few weeks as an AI apprentice been?
- The first couple of weeks at Khaite have been great. Even on the first day I was there, they had me building different features and coding right away, which I love because I like to start working immediately. It really shows that I was well prepared from Flatiron School and able to take on this job. I was worried that I wouldn’t know enough or that I didn’t have enough skills in software engineering. Although this is my first real engineering role, I was really able to accomplish any tasks they gave me, and not only just to complete them, but they were also very pleased with the results. They were so surprised about how the different things I’m able to build with AI can really help their company and make things go so much faster. I do have a supervisor who is really helpful. She explains the different problems the team is having, which makes it nice to have someone lead me through the company and explain what’s happening. She’s been so supportive and great to work with. From her showing me the issues that they have and her day to day work, ideas come into my brain. For example, I say, “How would you feel about incorporating the Anthropic API here? It could detect errors and make this process a lot more simpler and you wouldn’t have to manually go in and check for errors yourself.” I notice things she is doing manually, and with the skills I learned at Flatiron School, I think about how she could do things much faster with automations and AI. That is why I am there. I bring these ideas to her attention, and I end up creating something they can use and that’s helpful to them, and they’re really grateful. It’s a nice relationship where I get to help them and feel good coding and engineering for them, and they appreciate the work I’m giving them.
- What skills have proven most valuable since starting your apprenticeship?
- I would say definitely my work with APIs has become helpful, especially any AI APIs. I’ve been using the Anthropic API, the OpenAI API, and a lot of companies have APIs for all sorts of things. At Khaite, they use Shopify and also Bynder. I’ve been finding ways to incorporate all those APIs to talk to each other. That’s been a really helpful skill, just understanding how that architecture all works. Also, throughout the first couple or weeks of the apprenticeship, the group work that we did was really helpful. Although I have worked in a group before, I feel like group engineering is a different process, with everyone working on different sorts of code. Getting really comfortable with GitHub has been extremely helpful, even just learning the different commands in GitHub, like pulling PR requests. That was something I never had to do before, especially working on solo projects. The apprenticeship really did teach me a lot about GitHub and working with other engineers.
- What does it mean to you to be adding real value to an organization at this stage of your journey?
- It’s so rewarding. It makes me feel like a real engineer. I’ve had a lot of self doubt and imposter syndrome while in school, thinking, “How are my skills going to be helpful? Do I know enough about engineering?” You really don’t know until you just start doing it. It’s been so rewarding and almost kind of funny to see how impressed they are with my skills, even though I think of myself as such a beginner and feel like I don’t know a ton about engineering. I mean, the world of technology is so huge, but truly, Flatiron School knows the right practices and what’s trending right now, and the skills that engineers need to know today. I’m grateful that I know the relevant skills, even down to different coding languages that are prevalent now, like how the Flatiron School emphasizes Python and JavaScript, things that modern, innovative companies are using now. I’m grateful that I didn’t have to go through classes in C# or something that is a little more outdated. It feels really good to know that I came out prepared and that the skills that I’m working on are actually helpful to the company. It also makes me think about my future and all the different things I’ll hopefully get to engineer and grow into.
- What are you most excited to learn or accomplish in the coming months?
- I’m really excited to see how my skills can go even further at the company that I’m at. Right now, I feel like I’m fixing little things here and there, but I would love to develop a full website that could help a bunch of different departments. Instead of just solving little problems here and there, I’d love to create something that could really improve workflows and totally change how they do things in a way that’s helpful for them. For example, a website that could streamline processes. Maybe it’s something they’re not used to, but something that could really help reduce how long it takes them to do things or make tedious tasks much easier.
- Are there any other skills you’re applying right now, or any ways the curriculum is directly relevant to the work you’re doing?
- Something else that I found really helpful, and that was kind of a surprise to me, was the data analytics part of this apprenticeship. I never realized how much, in engineering, you really have to understand data analytics. All those skills, even just using like JupyterLab or getting comfortable with those tools, are so important because what you’re engineering is for an actual company. So you need to be thinking like the marketing team and the branding team, considering the processes they’re going through and how to make them easier, instead of just coding. You really need to understand the department you’re working with in order to help them. I’m really grateful that I was able to take those data analytics courses. It truly has helped my coding and given me a better understanding of where they’re coming from.
- Are there any soft skills that you’ve learned or developed that have been especially helpful in your role?
- Being adaptable is something that I’ve learned that you have to be. Not everything is black and white. There isn’t an assignment with clear guidelines and grading policies at companies. You just have to look at the the problem at hand and use your own problem-solving skills. I feel like I use a lot of creative ways of thinking in this job. It’s not always so clear-cut. So definitely, taking each problem as you see it and adjusting to what you think would help, and also not being afraid to build and code something, and show it to someone and say, “What do you think about this? Do you think this would be helpful in taking what they say?” Then, applying their corrections or other features that they would like. It truly is such a collaborative experience being an engineer at a company. It feels good to know that people are going to use your product or your code, and they can give you valuable insight into how it could be better. So just taking that, not even as criticism, just that these people are helping you become a better engineer and helping your code become more useful.
- Can you share what you’ve been enjoying most about your apprenticeship, including the company culture?
- The culture at Khaite has been surprisingly supportive and amazing, and it made me really fall in love with working, which sounds crazy. But when you have a team that is so close to each other, and they welcome you with open arms, it feels so good to have the skills that you’ve been working toward be useful. Also, that human connection is so important. I do go into the office in person, so being there with all the other engineers and being able to work with them, and even just like go to lunch together, makes me really feel like I’m a part of a community. Even though it is work, it is really rewarding to be around other people who think like you from an IT and tech perspective. It just feels really good to be around a supportive environment, and it makes me want to go to work and enjoy working, which sounds crazy, but it really is.
