MIT- Software Engineer Intern |Helios|

About the Internship

As a Software Engineer Intern, you will spend 12 weeks working with a small, collaborative engineering team. You will contribute to meaningful projects throughout the product lifecycle, from design and implementation through testing and production deployment.

You will work alongside experienced engineers who are invested in your growth. You will gain practical experience building cloud services, solving distributed-systems problems, and understanding how production software is developed, operated, and improved.

What You’ll Do

• Develop features and services that support the lifecycle of customer workspaces and databases
• Build automation for provisioning, scaling, upgrades, backups, and recovery
• Improve service reliability, availability, observability, and operational efficiency
• Design and implement backend services and APIs for cloud database management
• Investigate and resolve performance, scalability, and correctness issues
• Write production code, tests, documentation, and technical designs
• Participate in code reviews, technical discussions, debugging, and team planning
• Collaborate with engineers, product managers, and cross-functional partners

Depending on your team and project, you may work on areas such as control-plane services, data-plane systems, cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, developer tooling, monitoring, or customer-facing cloud experiences.

Required Qualifications

• Currently enrolled in a bachelor’s or master’s degree program in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field
• Strong foundation in data structures, algorithms, and software design
• Programming experience in Go, Java, Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, or a similar language
• Understanding of operating systems, distributed systems, networking, or databases
• Familiarity with Linux or Unix-based systems
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Ability to communicate clearly and collaborate effectively with teammates
• Curiosity, ownership, and willingness to learn

Prior professional experience is not required. We welcome candidates who have developed their skills through coursework, research, projects, internships, or open-source contributions.

Preferred Qualifications

• Coursework or project experience in distributed systems, cloud computing, databases, networking, or operating systems
• Experience building backend services, APIs, automation, or developer tools
• Familiarity with containers, Kubernetes, or public cloud platforms
• Experience with observability, monitoring, debugging, or performance analysis
• Experience contributing to production software or substantial technical projects
• Interest in reliability engineering and operating services at scale

What You’ll Gain

• Hands-on experience building cloud software for a production database platform
• Mentorship from experienced cloud and distributed-systems engineers
• Exposure to cloud infrastructure, database systems, reliability, and large-scale automation
• Opportunities to own meaningful work and see your contributions move toward production
• Collaboration with teams across engineering and product
• A supportive environment focused on technical growth and meaningful ownership