Intern to Architect
Amazon is considered one of the “Big Four” tech companies, not just for how it has revolutionized shopping and commerce, but for its role in web services and artificial intelligence (AI). The company’s vast ecosystem powers much of the modern internet, and its AI tools are now being adopted by industries of all kinds. Working within this environment is computer science alumnus John Boren, B.S. ’20, who serves as a solutions architect for Amazon Web Services (AWS).
When Boren first joined AWS in 2022, his responsibilities centered on helping companies migrate their operations to the cloud and manage their data infrastructure. But as AI rapidly grew in importance across industries, his role evolved. Today, he helps companies harness the power of AI by guiding them in building and implementing systems that use machine learning to streamline operations, improve decision-making and uncover new business opportunities.
Because his career began just as AI was becoming mainstream, Boren had a front-row seat to its transformation. He has seen industries move from experimenting with AI in limited projects to fully integrating it into their core business strategies. From predictive analytics in health care to natural language processing in customer service, the applications have been wide-ranging.
“Seeing this space evolve has been interesting,” said Boren. “What I’m seeing is people in other industries connecting it to their own niches and experiences. I’m seeing people starting to think about how AI tools can help them alleviate the heavy lifting they used to have to do and allow them to focus on the stuff that’s actually important: the ideas.”
The dream of working in technology has been with Boren since childhood, when video games sparked his curiosity about how complex systems could be built. Getting his start in high school by writing simple programs on a calculator, he eventually dove into computer science and software engineering courses.
Continuing his development at UAA, his education stretched across two decades, marked by time abroad, personal loss and years working outside of his dream career field. At one point he earned more than $100,000 a year in the oil fields of Alaska, only to realize during an economic downturn that the stability he wanted for his future would have to come from a different career. That realization brought him back to UAA to complete his computer science degree.
Born in Fairbanks and raised in Seward, UAA not only gave him a strong technical foundation but also the encouragement to see opportunities far beyond Alaska. Professors introduced him to advanced ideas in computing, including early exposure to techniques similar to those used in today’s large language models before tools like ChatGPT became widely known.
“UAA was definitely ahead of the curve,” said Boren. “For example, our professors introduced n-grams to us, which are a way of predicting the next word based on how many times that word came before it, and that is very similar to modern-day large language models. So UAA definitely helped align students to think bigger and outside of Alaska.”
Equally important were the internships he pursued along the way. His first came through the University of Colorado Denver, where he worked with Lipper Analytical Services, a division of Reuters, followed by two summers at IBM Research in New York. Back at UAA, he interned at a lidar (light detection and ranging) processing plant at Merrill Field, and with Anchorage-based startup Legalverse through UAA’s Upstart Internship program. He later joined the Upstart Alpha accelerator, where he experimented with building voice recognition apps and gained a crash course in startup culture.
For Boren, these experiences show why internships are essential. They not only bridge the gap between classroom knowledge and professional application, but also offer students a chance to make mistakes, explore industries and build relationships that can shape an entire career.
Yet even with education and experience, Boren believes success in AI and tech requires something less tangible: fearlessness. The industry evolves at breakneck speed, and progress often comes from those willing to try, fail and try again, which he knows all too well from experience.
“Be curious,” said Boren. “Use the tools. Go out and talk to people. Get an internship. Build stuff, break it and build it differently. If you never try, you’ll never learn. And the more you put yourself out there, the easier it gets, and you get those second- and third-order differentiated benefits that you didn’t even know were possible.”