Internship Program

We run an intentional twelve-month apprenticeship: an engineer joins as an intern, grows fast through real work, and graduates as a capable mid-level engineer. The hiring loop that gets someone here (who to interview, the take-home, the interview, the call) is the single authority at Hiring; this page is what happens after they say yes.

The Arc#

Twelve months, two halves, then graduation. High churn is the design, not a failure. We would rather grow excellent engineers quickly and send them on than hold seats. The team stays sharp, the bar stays high, and we build a network of alumni who learned to build the Systeric way.

The rungs are the same ones in Product Engineer; this is the timeline for climbing them. The day-to-day shape of the first half (the split with your senior, the guardrails, and the day-7/30/90/180 milestones) is in PE Apprenticeship; this table is the full-year view through graduation.

Phase	Window	From to	The move
Apprentice	Months 0 to 6	Intern to Junior	Stop needing every step spelled out. Take a scoped task to done on your own.
Builder	Months 6 to 12	Junior to Mid	Stop needing the problem handed to you. Turn a symptom into a Build-ready definition and ship it.
Graduate	Around month 12	Mid, and out	A capable mid-level engineer who owns a problem end to end, unsupervised.

These are targets, not guarantees. Some move faster, some need longer; the transitions are earned against the Product Engineer bar, not the calendar. But the calendar is the plan, and drifting far past it is a signal to address, not ignore.

Months 0 to 6, Intern to Junior. Go from executing tasks to owning them. Read Core end to end, then Product Engineer, in that order. See PE Apprenticeship for the day-to-day: what the senior owns versus what you own at each stage, the guardrails, and the day-7/30/90/180 milestones that mark this half.

Months 6 to 12, Junior to Mid. Go from working inside a defined problem to defining the problem yourself. Own Discover on small problems before the Define session; take a reported symptom and produce the problem statement; own a feature from problem to shipped and measured. Grow the judgment spokes, critical thinking and product sense, plus delivery discipline (flags, instrumentation, mitigate before investigate). In the second half you also start giving back: help the next cohort through their first six months, pairing on their early tasks, answering their questions, reviewing their PRs. This is your first real Leverage, the attribute that carries you from Junior to Mid, and teaching the basics is how you prove you own them. It also builds the social capital that outlasts the internship, so do not keep score. That mentoring is part of why a year here graduates a Mid, not a Junior: an engineer who lifts the people around them is already working above their own tasks. Ready for Mid when they take a symptom, frame the real problem, own the definition, and ship it unsupervised.

Graduation. At around a year, a graduating intern is a mid-level engineer: they own a problem end to end, unblock themselves and others, and ship complex work cleanly without supervision. Graduation is a real send-off, not a quiet exit. We help them land their next role, and they stay part of the network.

How It Runs#

The buddy and manager 1:1 cadence, daily tapering to none for the buddy, weekly then biweekly for the manager, using the Product Engineer radar and the usual growth move (feed the spike, clear the one blocker), is in PE Apprenticeship. No surprises: the half-year transitions are discussed continuously, never sprung. If someone is behind at month 5, they have known since month 3.