Internship guides
How to get a data & software engineering (infra) internship
How data & software engineering (infra) internships are actually won: the skills employers screen for, how to stand out without experience, what the interviews test, and live data on who is hiring right now.
The data & software engineering (infra) internship market right now
Intern Insider is currently tracking 165 open data & software engineering (infra) internships, 82 added this week. 100% of postings that disclose pay are paid, and 12% offer remote work. Employers hiring now include American Express, S&B USA Construction & Fay, PwC, Palantir Technologies, SAP.
Skills employers screen for
- SQL and data modeling
- Python scripting
- One cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure) at a working level
- Linux and the command line
- Understanding of pipelines and scheduling
How to stand out without experience
- Build a small end-to-end pipeline that ingests a public API into a queryable store on a schedule
- Break something in your own project and write up the postmortem
- Get comfortable reading infrastructure docs; the field rewards people who can self-serve
What the interviews test
Expect SQL exercises, a Python screen, and design questions about moving and storing data reliably. Be ready to reason about failure cases: what happens when the source is late or the job dies mid-run.
When to apply: the summer 2027 cycle
Big programs open applications around August-November 2026; healthcare, media, and startups keep posting into spring 2027. Roles start May-June 2027. Applying inside the first days of a posting matters more than a perfect resume submitted late, so check the freshest roles first.
