Software Engineer Intern

ShopBack; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 34,000 - 55,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Career growth

Winning team

Competitive pay

Open culture

Job summary

ShopBack is seeking an AI-focused intern to ship features end-to-end, from design to production, with a mentor guiding you.

You’ll build with AI as a teammate, review outputs, and craft tools or workflows your team will reuse after the internship ends.

We value clean code, solid data structures, APIs, testing, and real-world side projects or freelance work; curiosity and fast learning are essential.

Qualifications

• Fundamentals in clean code, design patterns, data structures, APIs, and testing.
• Built projects outside of class; side projects, hackathons, open source or freelance work count.
• Applied AI beyond chat; built an app on a LLM API or engineered agent workflows.
• Curious and sceptical; you verify AI outputs before relying on them.
• Fast learner and eager to learn new things in a global team.

Responsibilities

• Ship real features end-to-end, from design to production with mentorship.
• Build with AI as a teammate; review, test, and verify agent outputs.
• Create AI tools or workflows that the team will reuse after your internship.
• Measure and evaluate AI-powered work to prove impact.

Skills

Clean code

Design patterns

Data structures

APIs

Testing

AI integration

Side projects

Learning velocity

Tools

TypeScript / Node.js

Postgres

Kafka

Kubernetes

GitLab

Datadog

Claude Code

MCP

Job description

Our Journey

The ShopBack Group is Asia-Pacific's leading shopping and rewards platform, trusted by over 20 million active members across 13 markets, including Germany and the United States. Driven by the vision to make every day more rewarding, ShopBack saves members money and time with more ways to earn and more to do with what they earn, and empowers merchants and brand partners to effectively engage its members. Founded in Singapore in 2014, ShopBack now powers over US$5.5 billion in annual sales and half a million transactions a day for more than 20,000 online and in-store partners. As a ShopBack intern, you do real work and deliver real impact. You ship code that goes to production and is used by millions of members all over the world. AI agents are part of how we build every day, so you will orchestrate and build with them from day one.

What You'll Own

• Ship real features. You own a scoped project, from design to production, with a mentor who supports you.
• Build with AI as a teammate. You use coding agents to move fast, and you learn to review, test, and verify what they produce.
• Make AI tools for others. You build a skill, a tool, or an agent workflow that your team keeps using after your internship ends.
• Measure, don't guess. You write evals and tests so you can prove that your AI-powered work is good.

Essentials To Succeed

• You have good fundamentals. You can write clean code, you are familiar with design patterns, and you understand data structures, APIs, and testing.
• You have built things outside of class. Side projects, hackathons, open source, and freelance work all count.
• You have applied AI, not only chatted with it. What have you built? Tell us about an app on an LLM API, a custom agent or MCP server, a boring task you automated end to end, or a simple eval you used to compare prompts or models.
• You stay curious and sceptical. You ask why the AI gave an answer, and you check it before you trust it.
• You learn fast. You are excited to learn new things. You are comfortable when you do not know something yet, and you ask good questions.

Show Us What You Built with AI

• The coolest one: the thing you are most proud of, or the thing that made people say "wait, how?"
• Or the hardest one: the thing that broke many times before it worked.

For Each One, Tell Us

• The problem: what you wanted to solve, and why it mattered to you.
• What you built: what you built, compared to what the AI did.
• What broke: where the AI failed, and how you found and fixed the problem.
• The result: a link to a repo, a demo, a video, or a write-up. A result that works with rough edges is better than slides that look polished.

Start where the problem is real. A personal agent that saves your time 10 minutes every day is better than a big idea that nobody built. Build it, ship it, and let people use it.

Bonus Points

• Agents: you built an agent that uses tools, keeps memory, or runs many steps without a human.
• Evals: you wrote evals or tests to measure whether your AI output improved.
• Real users: you shipped something that people other than you actually use.
• Cloud: you deployed your project to a cloud platform.

We are looking for builders who are curious about AI and make a real impact with it.

Technologies You'll Touch

• TypeScript / Node.js
• Postgres
• Kafka
• Kubernetes
• GitLab
• Datadog
• Claude Code
• MCP

ShopBacker Traits

• Agency - We take ownership and act, rather than waiting for permission. When something's blocking progress, we find a way through it and follow through until it's done.
• Judgement - We aim for high-impact decisions, not just easy wins, and we put the bigger picture ahead of individual interests. That means moving quickly and confidently, while staying thoughtful about when a call really matters.
• Learning Velocity - We pick up new skills fast and let go of old habits just as quickly when something better comes along. We benchmark ourselves against the best and keep raising our own bar.
• Tenacity - We stay in it when things get hard, keeping a level head under pressure. We debate openly before deciding, then commit fully — and support each other along the way.

What's in it for ShopBackers

• Career growth opportunities to take on greater challenges that help you realise your ambitions.
• Be part of a winning team on a journey to global scale.
• Competitive compensation based on performance.
• Candid, open, and collaborative culture where feedback is valued.

We are committed to protecting your data and ensuring fairness in our recruitment process. We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help our team review applications, analyse resumes, match candidates to roles, generate interview notes, and assess responses. These tools assist our recruiters and interviewers and they do not make final hiring decisions. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If an assessment is part of your process, we may (with your consent) capture screen activity and/or webcam images during the test to help verify test integrity. We do not use AI to infer your emotions or sensitive traits. We process personal data lawfully, securely, and transparently in line with applicable data-protection laws and our commitment to fair employment. You can ask questions or exercise your rights including to request human review or to challenge an outcome by contacting [email protected] . ShopBack is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other protected status under applicable laws. Join our team and help us make a difference!