High School Internship, Software Engineering (Summer 2027)

Details

This role is intended for current high school students graduating in 2027 or later.

About Stripe

Stripe is a technology company focused on improving the conditions for economic growth and prosperity. It builds programmable financial infrastructure, reliable APIs, risk and fraud infrastructure, and other systems that support businesses around the world.

Role Description

This is a small, selective internship for exceptional high school students and recent graduates whose technical work already stands out well beyond what is typically expected at this stage. Interns will spend 12 consecutive weeks between May and August 2027 working in person from Stripe's San Francisco or Seattle office on a scoped engineering project.

Interns will own a problem end to end with support from their manager and teammates, contribute to Stripe's codebase, and learn how engineers build reliable systems used by millions of businesses. Recent intern projects have included expanding Payments Foundation Model capabilities for generalized anomaly detection, building fraud controls, creating safer payouts, and developing user-facing solutions for pricing and merchant checkout setup.

This is not a trainee or classroom-based program. Interns are expected to contribute to team work, learn quickly, communicate clearly, ask strong questions, and produce work that holds up under technical review. Strong performance may lead to consideration for future opportunities at Stripe, although future opportunities are not guaranteed.

Responsibilities

• Participate fully in the assigned team, including discussions, decisions, and the technical design process.
• Write, test, and document software intended for production use.
• Give and receive technical feedback through code reviews and design discussions.
• Collaborate with engineers and cross-functional partners.
• Learn unfamiliar systems through independent research and collaboration with managers, mentors, teammates, and subject matter experts.
• Communicate work status clearly, including progress, risks, open questions, and requests for help.
• Use current AI development tools thoughtfully while rigorously reviewing, refining, testing, and validating their outputs.

Requirements

• 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. Remote participation, a shorter internship, or breaks during the 12-week period cannot be accommodated.
• Programming experience through independent projects, research, coursework, competitions, open source contributions, a startup, or another setting.
• Strong programming fundamentals. Stripe primarily uses Ruby, Java, JavaScript, Go, and Scala, though new programming languages can be learned when fundamentals are strong.
• Evidence of exceptional technical achievement, such as a product or system built, substantial open source contribution, original research, meaningful startup work, advanced competition performance, or comparable work demonstrating depth and ownership.
• Ability to explain individual contributions, technical decisions, tradeoffs, testing, feedback, and potential improvements.
• Experience working with others on a technical project and incorporating feedback.
• 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 employment eligibility, minimum age, and documentation requirements for the role's location by the internship start date.

Preferred Qualifications

• Deeper technical knowledge in one or more areas, such as frontend, backend, infrastructure, data, machine learning, security, or developer tools.
• Experience writing high-quality pull requests, tests, technical documentation, or design notes.
• Familiarity with 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 economic growth.

Application Materials

• Resume or short summary of technical experience.
• One or two examples of strongest work, such as a repository, live product, technical paper, research abstract, competition submission, or project write-up.
• For each example, an explanation of the problem, personal contribution, hardest technical decision, testing approach, and lessons learned.
• Optional high school transcript and standardized test scores.

Compensation

This is an hourly position with a pay rate of $60 per hour.