This summer at Realtor.com, a coding project became a proving ground where two interns and their mentor discovered what’s possible when talent meets opportunity.
Senior Engineer Michael Zbeetnoff and interns Neil Tendolkar and Micah Chen became “Team Ollie” and took on two high-impact projects for the Avail team: migrating Avail’s code base email system to SendGrid and contributing the first component builds for Avail’s upcoming web app redesign.
The project required Michael to step into his first full-fledged team lead role. He learned to coordinate across marketing, design, and engineering, and lead Neil and Micah as they explored unfamiliar tech stacks, honed their collaboration skills, and left their mark on Avail’s product evolution.
Scaling Impact Through Email Modernization and UI Redesign
The first challenge for Team Ollie was moving Avail’s internal email system from an in-house code base to SendGrid, a dedicated email delivery service.
Previously, if marketing needed to change a codebase email – like updating text or swapping out an image – it had to go through engineering. That meant code changes, testing, and full production deployments for something that wasn’t inherently technical. By migrating them to SendGrid, Marketing has complete control over updates, eliminating the need for engineering intervention.
With the new setup, changes can go live instantly, freeing developer time and speeding up communication. SendGrid also improves email deliverability and can scale for high-volume sends, while built-in analytics for open rates, click-through rates, and delivery failures provide valuable insight.
Neil and Micah split the email functions in the code base, rewiring them to call SendGrid instead of the legacy service. They cleaned up unused “dead” code, migrated image assets to a secure content delivery network, and resolved tricky cases like embedding Google Maps when property data was incomplete.
The project also required translating technical templates into marketing-friendly documentation in Confluence, ensuring non-technical stakeholders could understand logic variations for landlords, tenants, and other user types.
During the second half of their internship, the focus shifted to Avail’s upcoming UI redesign. Working from a brand-new Figma design system, which offered updated color tokens, semantic states, and component hierarchies, Neil and Micah built the first unit-level modules for a key page in the app.
“Neil and Micah were able to surface early-stage issues and help move the redesign from proof-of-concept into active development,” Michael said.
Gaining Full-Stack Experience and Confidence Through Hands-On Challenges
Tackling two distinct projects in one summer required Neil and Micah to learn quickly and adapt to new tools – and they grew professionally in the process. They enjoyed the challenge