High School Internship, Software Engineering

About the Role

This is a small, selective internship for exceptional high school students graduating in 2027 or later, whose technical work already stands out well beyond what is typically seen at this stage. This is not a trainee or classroom-based program. You will spend 12 consecutive weeks between May and August working in person from Stripe’s San Francisco or Seattle office on a scoped engineering project. You will own a problem end to end with support from your manager and teammates, contribute to Stripe’s codebase, and learn how engineers build reliable systems used by millions of businesses.

Key Responsibilities

• Participate fully in the team you join, including team discussions, decisions, and the technical design process.
• Write, test, and document software intended for production use by Stripe teams and users.
• Give and receive technical feedback through code reviews and design discussions.
• Collaborate with engineers and cross-functional partners to seek and incorporate feedback.
• Learn unfamiliar systems through independent research and close work with your manager, mentor, teammates, and subject matter experts.
• Communicate the status of your work clearly, including progress, risks, open questions, and where you need help.
• Use current AI development tools thoughtfully while applying rigorous judgment to review, refine, test, and validate outputs.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Currently enrolled in high school, or graduating from high school before the internship begins.
• Available to work full-time and in person from Stripe’s San Francisco or Seattle office for 12 consecutive weeks during a mutually agreed period between May and August 2027.
• Experience programming through independent projects, research, coursework, competitions, open source contributions, a startup, or another setting.
• We work mostly in Ruby, Java, JavaScript, Go, and Scala.
• Evidence of exceptional technical achievement for your stage.
• Ability to explain your individual contribution to the work you submit, including the problem, technical decisions, tradeoffs, testing, feedback, and what you would improve.
• Experience working with others on a technical project and incorporating feedback from peers, mentors, teachers, users, or collaborators.
• Ability to learn unfamiliar systems through independent research and work with a mentor or subject matter expert.
• Clear written and verbal communication.
• Ability to meet the employment eligibility, minimum age, and documentation requirements for the role’s location by the internship start date.

Qualifications

• Ambitious builder: Energized by building solutions without a clear precedent and working through difficult technical problems.
• Rigorous thinker: Cares about whether your work is correct, not just whether it runs.
• Adaptable problem solver: Learns quickly, responds well to feedback, and keeps making progress when the path is unclear.
• Collaborative teammate: Communicates clearly, treats others with kindness, and knows when to work independently and when to ask for help.

Preferred Qualifications

• One or more areas of deeper technical knowledge, such as frontend, backend, infrastructure, data, machine learning, security, or developer tools, balanced with strong general programming fundamentals.
• Experience writing high-quality pull requests, tests, technical documentation, or design notes.
• Familiarity navigating an unfamiliar codebase or contributing to a multi-person project.
• A record of sustained technical work over time.
• Curiosity about how businesses operate and how software can improve the conditions for economic growth.