Cybersecurity Intern

Upbound Group Inc.; Plano (TX); On-site; USD 30,000 - 33,000; Full time

Job summary

Upbound Group invites students to join its 2027 Summer Intern Program in Plano, TX, focusing on cybersecurity. The role blends offensive and defensive techniques using AI to assist analysts, with mentorship and hands-on project work.

You will ship working code, document it, and pass it to the team after you graduate, while learning in a structured yet flexible environment.

Qualifications

• Completed coursework in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Data Science, or related field.
• Experience with AI, LLMs, or agent-based projects is a plus.
• Familiarity with Python, Git, APIs and JSON required or demonstrated.

Responsibilities

• Assist Cybersecurity team by building offensive and defensive harnesses; document and hand off work.
• Use AI coding tools daily; write tests, perform code review, and document results.
• Demonstrate progress weekly; deliver a usable first version early and iterate.
• Prepare runbook and present tooling to cybersecurity leadership.
• Collaborate with mentors and interns to share learnings and insights.

Skills

Generative AI projects

AI coding assistants

Data analysis

Communication skills

Team collaboration

Education

Coursework in Cybersecurity, CS, DS

Tools

Python

Git

APIs

JSON

SQL

Pandas

Job description

Upbound Group Summer 2027 Internship – Cybersecurity

Who We Are

Upbound Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: UPBD) is a technology and data-driven leader in accessible and inclusive financial solutions that address the evolving needs and aspirations of underserved customers. The Company’s customer-facing operating units include industry-leading brands such as Acima, Brigit, and Rent-A-Center that facilitate consumer transactions across a wide range of store-based and digital channels, including over 2,300 company branded retail units across the United States, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Upbound Group, Inc. is headquartered in Plano, Texas.

Summer Intern Program

Upbound Group’s 2027 Summer Intern Program offers an immersive professional development experience that goes beyond traditional internships, providing participants with a comprehensive opportunity to grow both personally and professionally through dynamic networking events, engaging volunteer activities, and exclusive executive leadership speaker sessions. Interns can anticipate a robust learning environment that balances structured training modules with self-paced learning pathways, enabling them to explore their potential, develop critical skills, and gain meaningful insights into corporate culture.

Program Dates

The ten-week program will run from May 25 through July 30, 2027, and is an in-office experience at our company headquarters in Plano, Texas.

The Role

The Cybersecurity team’s job is to protect Upbound’s customers, employees, and brands from threat actors and fraudsters. This internship is part of how we bring AI into that work.

You’ll work as one team with the other cybersecurity interns, with a mentor from the Cybersecurity team, and build two things: an offensive harness that runs attacker techniques safely and measures how our detections respond, and a defensive harness that uses AI to help analysts triage alerts and recommend what to fix first.

You leave behind working code in our repository, documented and handed to the team that will run it after you go. This is new and interesting work, and your fresh thinking will help inject new ideas into our existing team.

Compensation

Summer Interns at Upbound Group are paid hourly in accordance with usual payroll procedures.

$23.00 per hour

Key Responsibilities

• Build the offensive harness: script MITRE ATT&CK techniques, run them in a test environment under agreed rules of engagement, and record whether each technique was detected and how quickly.

• Build the defensive harness: use LLMs and agents to draft alert triage for an analyst to review and to chain vulnerability findings into attack paths with a recommended fix order.

• Analyze what both produce: detection coverage against ATT&CK, time to detect, alert quality, and time to fix, and report what changed.

• Use AI coding tools every day and own what you ship: tests, code review, and documentation.

• Progress over perfection: ship a working first version early and improve it every week.

• Write the runbook, hand the tooling over, and demo it to cybersecurity leadership.

Qualifications

• You have built something with generative AI, such as an app on an LLM API or an agent, and you can show it.

• You use AI coding assistants, and you can explain what the tool wrote, what you changed, and why.

• You write Python, use Git, and can work with APIs and JSON. You know SQL and a data analysis library such as pandas.

• You can take a messy dataset, clean it, find what matters, and explain what you found.

• Coursework in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field. Capture-the-flag experience, a home lab, or a security certification helps.

• Must be a rising Junior or above at an accredited four-year college or university.

• Cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or higher

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills

• Ability to work in our home office in Plano, Texas Monday through Friday

To be eligible for this program, you must be authorized to work in the U.S. We do not offer any type of employment-based immigration sponsorship for this program. Likewise, Upbound Group will not provide any assistance or sign any documentation in support of any other form of immigration sponsorship or benefit including optional practical training (OPT) or curricular practical training (CPT.)