Software Engineering Intern

About InsteadInstead is where tax work gets done. Our AI agent orchestrates the entirety of how work gets done in tax, from preparation and compliance to filing and advisory. It's a fundamentally new way of doing tax work, and it's why top 500 firms, Big Four teams, and enterprise corporate tax departments are choosing Instead.What makes us unique: we hold full government approvals with the IRS, 48 states, and all cities to e-file 1040, 1041, 1120, 1120S, and 1065, with 706, 709, 990, 5500, 2290, and PPT coming for tax year 2026. Instead is a full replacement for CCH Axcess, GoSystem, UltraTax, OneSource, CorpTax, Lacerte, ProConnect, Drake, and more. No other tax startup will be able to offer these capabilities for years as we are two to three years ahead of everyone else in government approvals. This lets us build product experiences that are simply unmatched in the market.Instead is backed by Conviction, IRIS (the largest tax software provider in the UK), Skylark, Aprio, and many of our partners and customers. Our team includes leaders from Intuit, Gusto, Zenefits, Thomson Reuters, Wolters Kluwer, PwC, BDO, RSM, and KPMG.The RoleWe're looking for Software Engineering Interns to join our San Francisco team and build real features on our AI-powered tax platform. This is not a coffee-fetching internship. You'll ship production code that hundreds of accounting firms use, work alongside senior engineers, and get hands-on experience building with AI tools from day one. Our stack: Vue, Nuxt, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS on the frontend. Go, Docker on AWS ECS/Fargate, and PostgreSQL on AWS RDS on the backend. For AI, we use Cursor, Claude Code, Helicone, Gemini, and OpenAI, and we're constantly evaluating new toolsWhat You'll DoShip product features end to end on our live customer platform alongside senior engineerBuild and test AI-powered components including inference pipelines and prompt engineeringFix bugs and make product improvements based on real customer feedbackCreate internal tools that make the engineering team more productiveLearn our full stack and contribute across frontend, backend, and AI layerParticipate in code reviews, architecture discussions, and product planningWhat You BringCurrently pursuing or recently completed a degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related fieldStrong programming fundamentals. You can write clean code, debug efficiently, and think about edge casesFamiliarity with web development (frontend or backend). Experience with any modern framework countsCuriosity about AI and willingness to learn. Experience with AI coding tools (Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot) is a plusHigh attention to detail and a bias for shippingAbility to work on-site in San FranciscoWhat Makes Someone ExceptionalYou've built and shipped side projects or open-source contributions that demonstrate your ability to go from idea to working productYou already use AI tools in your coding workflow and understand how they change the way software gets builtYou learn fast and don't wait to be told what to do. When you see something broken, you fix itYou care about the end user, not just the code. You want to understand why something matters before you build itYou're excited about working at a startup where your work ships to real customers on day oneEqual Opportunity Employer - M/F/D/VAs a global business, we rely on diversity of culture and thought to deliver on our goals. To ensure we can do that, we seek talented, qualified employees in all our operations around the world regardless of race, color, sex/gender, including pregnancy, gender identity and expression, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, age, marital status, citizen status, veteran status, or any other protected classification under applicable law. We also make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and for sincerely held religious beliefs in accordance with applicable law.We trust our team with sensitive information, so all candidates who receive and accept employment offers must complete a background check before joining us.