Intern of the Week: Atharv Kulkarni

Name: Atharv Kulkarni

 

Pronouns: He/him

 

Semester of Internship: Fall 2025

 

Major: Cybersecurity

 

Current Class Level: Master's Student

 

This semester I completed a(n)...:  Co-op

 

Internship, Co-op, or Research Site (Company/Organization Name): Ardent Privacy

 

Location of the Organization (City, State): Arbutus, MD

 

Title of position: AI Security Engineer

 

Tell us about your internship, co-op, or research opportunity, including your day-to-day responsibilities:

I'm an AI Security Engineer at Ardent Privacy, a data privacy and AI governance startup based in Baltimore that builds software to help organizations operationalize regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and India's DPDPA. My work sits at the intersection of AI governance and software development. Day to day, I build product features that translate dense regulatory requirements into working software: adaptive compliance workflows, evidence collection pipelines, and policy controls that govern how AI agents are allowed to act on sensitive data. A lot of the job is reading the actual law closely, mapping each requirement to a concrete technical control, and then shipping the code that enforces it. On a given week I might be writing TypeScript or Python across the stack, designing the data model for a new compliance module, threat modeling how an AI feature could mishandle personal data, or researching how emerging AI governance frameworks should shape what we build next. The role rewards being equally fluent in the policy and the engineering, which means I get to own a feature from the regulatory question all the way to production.

 

Describe the process of obtaining your position. When did you hear of the position and submit your application?

I first heard about the role at the bwtech career fair, where I met the Ardent Privacy team and talked with them about the work they were doing in data privacy and AI governance. The conversation made it clear the position lined up well with my background in cybersecurity and software development, so I followed up and submitted my application shortly after the fair. From there the process moved into interviews focused on both my technical skills and how I thought about security and compliance problems, and not long after I was offered the position. The whole thing started from a single conversation at the fair rather than a cold online application, which is what made it work.

 

What resources did you use to find your current experience?

UMBC Career Center, Networking events (UMBC Connects, Info Sessions, Arts With a Purpose, etc.)

 

What have you enjoyed the most about your position and organization?

What I've enjoyed most is the level of autonomy. At a startup this size, I'm not handed narrow tickets; I get to own problems end to end, from the regulatory question to the architecture to the code in production. The most rewarding part has been building a new compliance product from the ground up, where I've had real input into how it's designed rather than just implementing someone else's spec. I've also enjoyed the work of bringing AI into an existing product without compromising its security, which is harder than it sounds. Bolting an AI agent onto a system that handles sensitive personal data forces you to think carefully about what the agent is allowed to touch, how its actions are authorized, and how you prove all of that to an auditor later. Getting to make those calls, and to be trusted with them, is what has made the position genuinely engaging.

 

How do you believe you have made an impact through your work?

The clearest impact has been shipping things that the organization now relies on rather than prototypes that sit on a shelf. By building compliance automation, I've taken work that used to be slow and manual, like mapping a regulation to controls and gathering evidence for an audit, and turned it into software that does it in a fraction of the time. That directly shapes what the company can offer its customers. On the AI side, the guardrail and authorization work I've done is part of what lets us add AI features to a product that handles sensitive personal data without taking on unacceptable risk, which is a prerequisite for the company moving in that direction at all. Beyond the code, I think I've had an impact on how we reason about these problems internally, by framing the security of AI agents as a question of what they are authorized to do rather than what inputs we can filter. Being early enough that those decisions stick is where I feel I've contributed the most.

 

What advice would you give to another student who is seeking an internship or similar experience?

Stay current, because this field moves faster than any curriculum can keep up with. The most useful thing I did was treat learning about new tools and trends as part of the job, not something extra, since what is cutting edge today is table stakes a few months later. My second piece of advice is to keep showing up to networking events even when it feels pointless. A surprising number of opportunities come from a single conversation rather than an application portal, and you only get those conversations by being in the room. Finally, apply even when you are convinced you are underqualified. The bar for getting your resume looked at is usually lower than you assume, and the people deciding would rather talk to someone hungry and still learning than pass on them over a checklist. The worst case is a no, which costs you nothing. Most of the breaks I got came from ignoring the voice telling me I was not ready yet.