Learn more and have a bigger impact at a YC startup
The Y Combinator Summer Internship Program is for undergraduate & graduate students in software engineering & data science who want to intern at a YC-backed startup.
At a YC startup, you'll jump into fast-paced, mission critical projects from day one, work directly with founders and early engineers, and build real-world software development skills. At the end of the summer, you'll look back and see features you built running in production.
As a program participant, you'll have access to:
- Invite-only events with YC partners and founders, including select Y Combinator S20 founder dinners
- A community of ambitious and entrepreneurial students (and maybe even your future co-founder)
- 1-1 mentorship and networking with YC founders and industry veterans
If you might want to join a startup full-time (or start your own someday), working at an early stage company is the best way to find out what it’s like. And because we know that interns learn a lot of valuable skills at our startups, we’ll also give special consideration to anyone who interns at a YC company and then goes on to apply to YC as a founder.
Experiences
“Our dinner with Michael Seibel was amazing. His stories on starting Twitch and working with startups were both inspiring and terrifying.”
Ethan Naluz, Gordian Software
“Even as an intern, I had a say in key decisions of our startup. And then I got to actually build and ship the ideas I came up with.”
Andrew Burns, Balto
“I got to learn directly from senior engineers who previously were at Google, and work in a small team to solve very complex problems.”
Janhavi Dahihande, Thunkable
Read more about life as a YC startup intern from Lucious McDaniel IV (FloRecruit) on the Work at a Startup Blog.
Participating Companies
Who should apply
We are focused on placing software engineering roles this summer. (In the future, we hope to expand to other roles as well.) The companies hiring interns are predominantly in the SF Bay Area and NYC, but we also have open internships in Atlanta, Chicago, Toronto, India, London and Malaysia. The events YC organizes will be in the Bay Area.