High School Fellowship, Software Engineering

The shape of it

In the posting’s own words

This is a small, selective internship for exceptional high school students and recent graduates whose technical work already stands out well beyond what we typically see at this stage. We are not looking for potential or credentials alone. We are looking for students who can show, through what they have built, researched, or contributed, that they are ready to do substantive engineering work with a Stripe team. 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. Recent Stripe intern projects include expanding Payments Foundation Model capabilities to improve generalized anomaly detection, building more approachable fraud controls, creating safer payouts, and developing user-facing solutions that prevent costly pricing mistakes and make merchant checkout setup easier.

What it asks for · 13

• Ambitious builder: Y ou are energized by building solutions without a clear precedent and working through difficult technical problems. You can point to technical work that shows unusual initiative, depth, or originality for someone at your stage.
• Rigorous thinker: You care about whether your work is correct, not just whether it runs. You test your assumptions, examine edge cases, and can explain the choices you made.
• Adaptable problem solver: You learn quickly, respond well to feedback, and keep making progress when the path is unclear.
• Collaborative teammate: You communicate clearly, treat others with kindness, and know when to work independently and when to ask for help.
• 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. We cannot accommodate remote participation, a shorter internship, or breaks within the 12-week period.
• 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. We believe new programming languages can be learned when the fundamentals are strong.
• Evidence of exceptional technical achievement for your stage. This could include a product or system you built, a substantial open source contribution, original research, meaningful work at a startup, advanced competition performance, or another body of work that demonstrates comparable depth and ownership.
• 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. Final language is subject to Legal review.

Also a plus

• 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, not only one-time awards or credentials.
• Curiosity about how businesses operate and how software can improve the conditions for economic growth.

What the job covers

• 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.

Tools and skills named

Words the posting leans on

• technical16×
• project6×
• test6×
• feedback5×
• internship5×
• learn5×
• problem5×
• research5×
• decisions4×
• engineers4×
• experience4×
• review4×
• school4×
• stage4×
• systems4×
• teammates4×

Counted from the posting after the mission statement and the legal notices are set aside. The ones near the top are the ones a screener is looking for.

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