Backend Platform Intern — CI/CD & Performance

The New York Times Company; New York (NY); On-site; USD 45,000 - 65,000; Full time

Job summary

The New York Times Company, through Wirecutter, is building the infrastructure and engineering systems behind its products. As a Developer Platform intern, you’ll work on practical projects to help teams test, deploy, and operate web apps, exploring performance bottlenecks and strengthening automated quality checks.

You’ll learn in a collaborative setting with mentors across the team. You’ll contribute to performance optimization and platform reliability, documenting improvements and sharing

Qualifications

• Experience with CI/CD workflows automating quality checks and deployments.
• Experience or project work focused on web performance optimization or latency reduction.
• A foundation in software development and an interest in how applications, infrastructure, and networks work together.
• A thoughtful, curious approach to debugging and problem-solving, and a willingness to collaborate and learn.
• Experience working with AI tools and agents like Claude Code.

Responsibilities

• Help improve CI/CD workflows that automate quality checks and code deployment.
• Investigate web application performance and contribute to latency-reduction efforts.
• Explore network requests and application or platform architecture to identify opportunities for better performance and reliability.
• Build, test, and document improvements in collaboration with engineers across the team.
• Share what you learn, including tradeoffs, results, and ideas for follow-up work.

Skills

CI/CD workflows

Performance optimization

Software development

Debugging mindset

GenAI tools (Claude)

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes

GitHub Actions

Job description

The New York Times Company, through Wirecutter, is building the infrastructure and engineering systems behind its products. As a Developer Platform intern, you’ll work on practical projects to help teams test, deploy, and operate web apps, exploring performance bottlenecks and strengthening automated quality checks.

You’ll learn in a collaborative setting with mentors across the team. You’ll contribute to performance optimization and platform reliability, documenting improvements and sharing