Software Engineering Intern

About Brilliant

Brilliant is creating a world of better problem solvers. We deliver learning that's interactive, adaptive, and fun – at scale. You can learn more about our approach, learners, and method on our about page.

We have always prioritized building a real, healthy business. We serve hundreds of thousands of paid subscribers, and want you to help us serve millions. We are default alive (will be profitable before needing to raise), and make hires very selectively and intentionally.

In our day-to-day, we value adventure, excellence, generosity, and candor. We are optimists in the face of uncertainty, we take pride in our work, we go the extra mile for each other, and we tell it like it is (the good and the bad). We’re here to do the best work of our lives together.

We believe that real-time collaboration and human connection are necessary ingredients in building a high-velocity, creatively-oriented consumer product. We maintain core hours (9:30am - 2:30pm Pacific) when everyone is online, regardless of timezone. Over half of us are located near our hubs in SF and NYC.

In addition to what’s below, you can see all open roles and learn more about our culture on our careers page.

The Role

We’re seeking a small number of highly motivated interns to join our engineering team.

By default, interns will join in Summer 2026. That said, we’re open to off-cycle internships for the right candidate. You’ll be working in-person in our NYC office, with a pay-rate of $2,500/week.

The exact work is TBD, based on our priorities and your skillset. What we know is that it will be real work, on real priorities, affecting real users — not “intern projects”. You need to be able (and excited) to hit the ground sprinting, which likely means that you’ve shipped substantial code into a production environment before (either at another startup or for a scaled side-project).

By the end of the internship, if all goes well, you’ll have made a material impact on our customers and the future of learning. You’ll have meaningfully up-leveled because of who you get to work with, and hopefully we’ll be mutually eager for you to start full-time ASAP.

• Want to work at Brilliant full-time, and are graduating in 2027 (or sooner, or are planning to drop out)
• Have shipped substantial code to production at a company serving real customers
• Have prior internship experience at a startup, and/or created a side-project or small business that required dedication over a span of months/years
• Consistently use AI when coding, while having a deep, nuanced understanding of limitations/pitfalls + what great code looks like
• Are already excellent at your craft, and want to be surrounded by people who will push you even further
• Specifically want to join a small company where every person works very hard and has outsized ownership
• Are driven by building useful things that impact real people (versus creating hype without utility)
• Are an excellent writer + reader (because we have a writing-heavy culture)