Mastering First Year Software Engineering Internships: A Comprehensive Guide

Landing a first software engineering internship is a crucial step towards launching a competitive technical career. This article provides a comprehensive guide for first-year students, outlining the requirements, opportunities, and strategies for securing and excelling in software engineering internships.

Introduction

First and second-year students often wonder about internship opportunities, with many employers preferring to hire those in their third year or even second year due to their advanced coursework. However, numerous programs and strategies are available for first-year students eager to gain experience. This guide explores these options and provides actionable advice for navigating the internship landscape.

Internship Opportunities for First and Second-Year Students

Several summer programs are specifically designed for first and second-year students, offering valuable opportunities to experience the product development cycle and gain practical skills.

Tech Internships and Opportunities

Explore Microsoft: A 12-week summer internship program tailored for first and second-year students, providing hands-on experience in design, build, and quality phases of product development. This program is designed to encourage your interest in computer science, computer engineering, or a related technical discipline. The Explore Internship is intended for students who are beginning their academic studies and would like to learn more about careers in software development through a learning program. Interns will gain group project experience working alongside other Explore Interns.
Google ASDI (Associate Software Development Intern): An internship for first and second-year undergraduate students passionate about Computer Science.

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Amazon Future Engineers: A software development internship program offering hands-on learning and building experiences for college freshmen and sophomores committed to computer science.
Civic Digital Fellowship: A program for mission-driven software engineers, data scientists, product managers, and designers to innovate at the intersection of technology and public service in Washington, D.C. Fellows receive a stipend, housing, and travel expenses.
Google Summer of Code (Open Source Projects): A global program where students contribute to open-source projects. Students contact organizations they want to work with and write up a project proposal for the summer. If accepted, students spend a month integrating with their organizations prior to the start of coding. Students then have three months to code, meeting the deadlines agreed upon with their mentors.
Outreachy: A paid, remote internship program supporting people from groups underrepresented in tech, helping newcomers contribute to free software and open source. Outreachy internship projects may include programming, user experience, documentation, illustration, graphical design, or data science.

Additional Programs

Deloitte Programs and Conferences: Deloitte offers multiple opportunities to gain experience and learn more about the organization.

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Capital One Summits: Capital One hosts various summits for first and/or second-year students, including ones for Developing Leaders, Software Engineering, Women in Business, Finance, and Human Resources.
Pathways Internship Program: Federal internships and opportunities for students of all years.
Commonwealth STEM Industry Internship Program (CSIIP): Connects STEM students to paid summer opportunities with companies in Virginia. The program requires that students have completed at least 30 credits before the internship begins.
UVA iGEM: A student-run research team and synthetic biology interest group participating in the International Genetic Engineering Machine competition.
P&G Standout Emerging Leaders Camp: An immersive program designed to give students experiences in a culture where diverse backgrounds are valued. Underrepresented students are strongly encouraged to apply.

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Programs for Second-Year Students

UVA Engineering Policy Internship Program: A program combining coursework focusing on communication and policy analysis skills with hands-on internships with science and technology policymakers in Washington, DC. Students must be enrolled as a second or third year student in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
The Launch Internship: An eleven-week paid internship program for students aspiring to be engineers (specifically sophomores) and seeking an opportunity learn about the finance industry. As a Launch Intern, you will join us in a premier destination of learning and mentorship.
The JPMorganChase Fellowship Program: A five-week paid, full-time summer fellowship held in select JPMorganChase offices. This program is seeking sophomore students, including, without limitation, Black, Hispanic and Latino students, who are interested in exploring career opportunities at JPMorganChase. This opportunity will expose you to careers in financial services and includes hands-on experience and a project-based curriculum, designed to help you build a pathway to future employment opportunities. Technical tracks include Global Technology-Software Engineering and Data Science.”Learn more and apply.
NVIDIA Ignite: A program created to give you real-world experiences with real technology. You’ll get hands-on exposure to never-before-seen solutions. You’ll even be able to choose your area of interest and interview with the team you’ll be joining-from engineering to finance, HR, marketing, and more. NVIDIA Ignite immerses students of historically underrepresented communities in a 12-week internship through NVIDIA’s products, culture, and ecosystem.
The Sophomore Discovery Fellowship Program: A program designed to provide students, who have completed their sophomore year of college, with an in-depth understanding of the day-to-day responsibilities of full-time employees across a variety of roles within Wells Fargo.
Bank of America Virtual Experience: Throughout this virtual experience, you’ll learn what it takes to be a technology professional at Bank of America.
Five Rings Workshop: This Summer 2026, Five Rings will host an immersive, 5-day workshop exploring how trading systems technologies are designed and built.
Jane Street Immersion Program (JSIP): A multi-week summer program that takes place in New York City. JSIP is intended for undergraduate students between their first and second years who are passionate about computer science and have also experienced barriers to opportunity within the field.
Career.edYOU Academy: A selective, virtual educational program designed for college sophomores in the United States interested in a career at JPMorgan Chase.
Futureforce Tech Launchpad: A Salesforce is a pre-internship program for sophomores powered by CodePath. It provides a hands-on, immersive experience combining full-stack web development and 1:1 mentorship to make students internship-ready.
FutureFocus: A selective educational experience for sophomores, designed to uncover how world-class engineers build and optimize the systems that move global markets.
First Generation Program: A curated educational program designed to enable First Generation students entering their second year at University to year prepare for a future career in tech.
Uber Career Prep (UCP): An unpaid fellowship for undergraduate engineering students that brings transparency and raises visibility around the necessary steps to embark on a STEM career in tech.

Strategies for Landing Your First Software Developer Internship

1. Start Early and Apply Widely

The earlier you begin the process, the higher the chances you will succeed in landing your first software developer internship. Many students often don’t realize that the application funnel can be more challenging than you might initially expect. It’s not uncommon for students to apply to more than 100 different companies for summer software engineering internship positions, and only receive 8-10 phone interviews, and then 4-5 to advance to an on-site interview. You will not hear back from half the companies you apply to. The most important thing is to start early, apply to enough places, and continuously work on it to land your best options. Many software engineering internships at large companies open in early August. Often, these applications are for internships not for the following summer but for the one the year after that! This is why researching and applying early is crucial.

2. Focus on Programs for First and Second-Year Students

For students who are earlier in their CS journeys, use this to your advantage and apply to programs that are catered toward first and second-year students. Many major tech companies, offer programs such as Meta University, which are designed to provide students with technical skill development and professional work experience. Interns work on projects ranging from AI and product design to software development and data analytics. Salesforce’s Futureforce Tech Launch program offers rising juniors a work and learning progam in full-stack web development. Students work out of the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco and are assigned a 1:1 mentor, who is a professional software engineer at Salesforce.

3. Prepare for Technical Interviews

Technical interviews are one of the most daunting challenges for emerging and experienced software engineers. Designed to assess a candidate’s problem-solving ability and communication skills, technical interviews are usually one of the biggest barriers that keep students out of the industry (if not enough practice and preparation is done). Students who successfully learn to tackle challenging algorithmic problems often go on to land the most competitive software engineering roles. Be sure to prepare for technical interviews early in your CS journey. Free resources like LeetCode are a great way to practice your coding skills and familiarize yourself with the types of problems you might encounter in a coding test. You don’t need to be able to solve every problem on LeetCode. Companies don’t expect you to have advanced-level programming skills - more so basic competency in programming. “Practice performing fundamental software engineering tasks under a time constraint,” Payne says. “Key technical skills include knowledge of fundamental concepts like software architecture, object-oriented design, SQL and databases, and software testing/debugging,” Payne says.

4. Build a Strong Portfolio with Side Projects

Side projects outside of class work can be an excellent way to differentiate yourself from other candidates when searching for software developer internships. If your university supports this, getting involved with research projects, i.e. We recommend doing a side project that you’re passionate about. It will be a lot more enjoyable. Finally, be sure to create a GitHub profile to showcase your projects and keep clear documentation. If the candidate doesn’t have prior work experience, [they’ll want to know] has the candidate completed personal projects or virtual experiences on Forage? This demonstrates that you’re going beyond what you learn in class and are taking opportunities to apply your skills.

5. Network and Leverage Connections

Meeting people and leveraging your connections is the fastest way to speed up your software developer internship search process. It is said that 70% of jobs come from networking, emphasizing its importance. Be sure to forge strong connections with fellow alumni, friends/classmates, friends of friends, and other professional engineers you come across throughout your CS journey. The larger your network, the easier it will be for you to land that dream software job. Joining communities and going to meetups can lead to personal connections. Talk to family, friends, professors, and mentors you currently know (i.e., your network) about your interests and goals. Update them as your interests and goals evolve. They may be able to refer you to people in their networks whose companies hire interns. Learn more about networking, which is a common way underclassmen have reported finding an internship.

Preparing for the Application Process

Self-Assessment

First, self-assess your skills and interests. Identifying strengths and weaknesses can align your abilities with internship options. Reflect on the programming languages you use best and any interesting projects you have tackled. You can also start by listing all the companies whose products you used or enjoyed, and then search “software engineering intern” or “software developer intern” on the sites.

Resume Building

List your key technical and hard skills like programming languages and software engineering concepts. Your soft skills are essential, too. Consider: When have you collaborated with others? Led a team? Problem-solved? In your resume’s “experience” section, describe how you worked with others to find solutions or get a job done. You don’t need to include professional experience if you don’t have it. Completing one also increases your chances of getting hired post-graduation. The company will likely outline what majors it’s looking for in the internship job description. “This isn’t always the case and can differ from firm to firm, but as a guide, having a GPA above 3.2 out of 4 will put you in a solid position to be considered further,” Grunfeld says. If the company is looking for specific requirements, be sure to include them. For example, companies might be looking to hire students from particular class years or within specific graduation dates.

Demonstrate Potential

“Hiring teams are looking for potential as much as they are for demonstrated experience and competency,” says Archie Payne, president of CalTek Staffing, an IT and technical staffing firm. “Interns need to be open to constructive feedback and have the kind of growth mindset that will allow them to learn and improve over the course of their internship. List your key technical and hard skills like programming languages and software engineering concepts. Your soft skills are essential, too. Consider: When have you collaborated with others? Led a team? Problem-solved? In your resume’s “experience” section, describe how you worked with others to find solutions or get a job done.

Excelling in the Internship

Technical Assessments and Interviews

“I’ll keep it simple, the advice for technical assessments (e.g., HackerRank and HireVue) is practice,” Grunfeld says. For an independent coding test, the employer will share a link to a common code editor. You can choose what language you want to program in. The company should give you instructions on how long you’ll have to complete the coding problems and whether you can leave the coding editor during the test. You might also have to do a whiteboard coding test. A whiteboard test is when you complete coding problems live in front of an interviewer. “My understanding though is that the interviewer is more focused on the way you approach problems than the answer itself,” Grunfeld says. After the coding test, you’ll likely have an interview to review your knowledge of technical concepts and share more about your experience. Internship applicants tend to be very early in their careers and often don’t have much (if any) experience interviewing for these kinds of roles. Because of that, they don’t know what to expect, and this can make the whole process much more intimidating.

Shreya Sridhar's Insights from SWE Internship

Show Up: Recruiting for start-ups is very different from the typical Workday application→HackerRank/ CodeSignal assessment→ Interview(s) screening process. My biggest piece of advice is to go to career/ start-up fairs, hackathons, and any other events involving emerging companies or products. These events are a great way to network with visionary leaders, showcase your skills, and keep abreast with the latest innovation. Face-to-face connections are particularly crucial in start-ups as their smaller size necessitates ensuring that each employee shares their core values to help build the DNA of their growing company.
Show Initiative: There’s a reason “initiative” is a word you’ve heard time and time again, and that’s because people acknowledge and appreciate proactive individuals. This couldn’t be more true for start-ups as their employees are self-starters themselves. After making connections at an event, be sure to follow up with the opportunities that excite you the most.
Don’t: Think you have to know everything to apply. You don’t need to know everything about an area that a start-up specializes in to show interest. However, you should take on every topic as a learning opportunity to conduct your own research both for your own learning and to show initiative. Then, ask questions during follow-ups and interviews where you are genuinely curious to fill in the gaps in what you studied.
Become a Sponge: During your first few weeks at a tech startup, expect to be inundated with a deluge of information. Rather than feeling overwhelmed, embrace the opportunity to become a sponge and eagerly soak up as much knowledge as you can. Trust me, this will pay off throughout the rest of your internship. It provides you with a solid foundation that boosts your confidence and consequently, empowers you to ask insightful questions and contribute meaningfully in team conversations.
Don’t: Mistake casual setting for a laid-back work environment. Folks at start-ups tend to dress more casually than those from traditional companies, swapping collared-shirts for T-shirts and slacks for jeans. Due to the flatter hierarchy, many also make themselves much more approachable - leading to a more inviting and “chill” environment. However, do not mistake kind, unpretentious people for being relaxed and laid-back.
Embrace the Culture: Each startup has its own specific culture that makes it special. It pays to learn about a company’s core values, seeing how others exemplify them and following suit.
Don’t: Let your previous experiences cloud new learnings. You were selected to be an intern partly due to the knowledge you've accumulated through previous experiences, such as coursework, personal projects, and previous internships. That being said, while it's essential to apply what you already know, it's equally important to maintain an open mind and embrace unfamiliar challenges to strike a balance between the old and new.
Take Ownership of Your Projects: Having frequent check-ins and open communication can showcase your work ethic and style as well as help you deliver what is expected of you and more. Voice your opinion for choices you make, and seek feedback to iteratively improve your work.
Don’t: Confine collaboration. Although you will probably have your hands full with your assigned intern project, be sure to venture out beyond your specific team. A startup is a great place to easily meet new people from diverse backgrounds and careers. Take advantage of the relatively flatter hierarchy to connect with individuals from different teams.
Enjoy the time well-spent. While you will work diligently to prove your fit within the company, also remember to have fun! Try to meet or connect with people in a social setting at least once. It’s fun to learn about other’s interests and various lived experiences, which can also help you envision your place among them.

Maximizing Your Internship Experience

Build Skills: Software engineering interns work with professionals to build their software development skills and learn what working in a professional environment is like. Depending on the internship, interns might complete tasks like writing, reviewing, testing, and debugging code, writing documentation, and improving software performance.
Network: They meet many engineering professionals in their field, which may open doors to mentorships and connections that help in job searches. Chat with your coworkers. Whether they’re industry professionals or fellow interns, it’s important to treat them with equal respect. You never know what insights they could lend, or who could be a valuable connection down the line, five or ten years from now. Don’t be afraid to ask your new colleagues out for quick coffee chats, or request 15-minute informational interviews about their career trajectory.
Attend Virtual Events: A good way to delve even deeper into your career path growth is to attend a virtual event or two. Not only will you be learning more about your own career, but there will also be chances to network with employers, industry specialists, and other students sharing different perspectives.

Job Roles and Locations

Internships in software engineering can fall under any of the following roles we’ve listed here for you! Internships are meant to guide you towards your true desired career path and your summer software engineering internship could kick it off in the right direction. For internships, it doesn’t matter if you’re on the hunt for software engineering internships in NYC or software engineering internships for Amazon or Google or software engineering internships in San Francisco. Look no further. When searching for software engineering internships, it’s key to use the location filters provided on Handshake. You’ll be able to pinpoint software engineering internships exactly where you want to intern just by selecting the city you want in the search bar. Easy software engineering internships in your preferred city are just a search away. You can even research possible job roles that you might want to explore during your software engineering internship. Handshake also makes it easy to learn about roles in software engineering simply by using the job role search bar. And if you want to take your research one step further, you can even research top employers in the software engineering field on Handshake. Even companies that don’t seem to have a main focus in software engineering are looking for bright interns to help them develop.

Compensation and Necessity of Internships

Yes, you can find paid software engineering internships on Handshake by using the search filters! The average annual pay for full time software engineering jobs range is $90,000. While it's not required, internships are great opportunities for growth and experience. From software engineer internships to great summer engineering internships, you’ll be able to build both hard and soft skills and even network.

Skills and Responsibilities of a Software Engineering Intern

Along with networking and gaining mentorship, software engineering interns will spend time working on skills great for later in their career journeys. Additionally, you’ll be immersed in the world of software engineering which will help you develop your knowledge of quantitative aptitude, how to manage software engineering projects effectively, and about your company’s personal contribution to the industry. When putting together your resume, make sure to have all your skills, courses, and accomplishments laid out for employers to view. Also having your preferred job role and location on your Handshake profile is a great way to signal your interest to potential recruiters. For software engineering interns, some great skills to list would be technical skills, time management, ability to follow through and execute, and ability to contribute and collaborate in a team setting. It’s also key to mention organizations or projects that you led and can explain thoroughly.

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