Virtusa’s inter-university SRE hackathon successfully concludes, setting benchmark for virtual competitions

A representative of Team V3 receiving the winner’s reward on behalf of the team

Virtusa, a global provider of digital strategy, digital engineering, and IT services and solutions, recently hosted the country’s inaugural Inter-University Hackathon focused on Site Reliability Engineering (SRE). A total of 60 undergrads from eight Universities participated in the eight-hour live event conducted 100% virtually in a bid to adapt to the new normal of Work from Anywhere (WFA). A platform specially designed for online hackathons with individual breakout rooms, group chats, live agenda, lobbies and streaming sessions, were leveraged for the event. 

“Despite the gruelling, real-time nature of the hackathon, we experienced immense competition,” Head of Campus Reach Sri Lanka Suweda Rajaratnam stated. 

Virtusa’s industry-academia partnership initiative organised the event in collaboration with the Corporate Communication team of Virtusa Sri Lanka. It was engaging and encouraging to witness how students have adapted to virtual working environments, which also gave Virtusa an opportunity to identify and benchmark the evolving IT talent pool across the country. 

“We are thrilled with the success of this inaugural season of Virtusa Sri Lanka’s hackathon series and look forward to hosting upcoming seasons based on emerging technologies.” 

Three alternative challenges were presented to the teams upon registration, with each option curated to provide a full 360-degree immersion into SRE, a practice based on DevOps principles enabling engineers to create the ideal, reliable operations ecosystem. A judging panel consisting of Virtusa experts evaluated each solution based on a pre-defined scoring mechanism. Team V3 from the Java Institute of Technology walked away with top honours and a cash prize of Rs. 200,000. 

“This was the first time we participated in a hackathon of this scale and competition,” The post-event statement from the winners read. “The experience and knowledge we gained was priceless. With the support and guidance from the organising committee and judging panel, our success came from our ability to work together as a team, adapt to a real-time environment and overcome obstacles. We appreciate the organisers’ hard work throughout and like to express our gratitude to Virtusa for giving us an opportunity to test the latest global technologies, by hosting this hackathon.”

Team MisSprints and Team Unknown, both from University of Colombo School of Computing took the first and second runners up positions, winning Rs. 100,000 and Rs. 75,000 respectively, along with a number of complementary smart devices such as the Amazon Echo Dot. While selecting the top performers of the hackathon were guaranteed job opportunities at Virtusa, some of the solutions created will also be studied for incubation, further development and up-cycling in collaboration with the participants to promote sustainable engineering. As the premier Digital and IT solutions Company in Sri Lanka, Virtusa continues to set exemplary benchmarks in building the next generation of IT talent and is the single largest employer of fresh graduates in the country with an intake of over 500 interns annually. 

Virtusa Senior Director of Technology Misnad Haque, who initiated the SRE Challenge for Season One of the SL Hackathon series, stated: “Virtusa’s SRE hack has set the benchmark for future SRE themed hackathons in Sri Lanka. We wish to continue this as an annual tradition and grow a sustainable pipeline of SRE talent, while also enabling a direct connect for University students to experience working on mission critical systems in the industry – minus the risk.”

Students from the University of Moratuwa, University of Jaffna, NSBM Green University, Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT), Horizon Campus and ESOFT Metro Campus also participated at the event. All participants received a swag bag for their contribution in the event along with a NFT (non-fungible token) that can be minted into an Ethereum wallet to commemorate their attendance. This was the first time a POAP (proof of attendance protocol) token on the Ethereum blockchain was distributed to participants of such an event in Sri Lanka – another first from Virtusa.