Design Engineer Intern

Description

Design Engineer Intern @ the company

Seasonal Internship • San Francisco

Mission

The company builds persistent computers for AI agents. Our flagship product, Dedalus Machines, gives agents an isolated environment where they can run software, keep files and state, and work over time.

We are looking for an exceptional Design Engineer Intern who wants to build the interface for the platform that will power the AI agents of the future.

This is not a traditional summer-only internship. We accept applications on a rolling, year-round basis and typically run four internship seasons each year. Each internship lasts approximately three months and is full-time for the duration.

The program is designed for unusually talented, high-slope builders who may not yet be ready for a full-time role but have already demonstrated exceptional ability for their stage. Strong interns may be considered for full-time opportunities.

You might be a fit if you

Are obsessive about user experience.

Measure thrice, cut once.

Sweat the small details.

Believe great products are built from millions of tiny perfected parts.

Live at the bleeding edge of web and browser technology.

Have strong opinions about frameworks, languages, rendering models, and where the web is going.

Think the internet should be faster.

Have shipped unusually polished work for your stage.

Understand why a spring beats a tween.

Care about optimal bundling strategies.

View software engineering as moving typed data around.

Believe actions speak louder than words.

Are high agency and fiercely independent.

Say how things ought to be built, then build them.

Learn quickly and actively seek difficult feedback.

Can explain the hardest part of your work in detail.

Are a competitive teammate with a heart of gold.

Go above and beyond in everything you do.

Responsibilities

• Design and build interfaces for AI-agent infrastructure.
• Work across interaction design, visual design, and frontend engineering.
• Turn ambiguous product ideas into thoughtful, polished experiences.
• Build responsive, accessible, and high-performance interfaces.
• Prototype new interactions using modern browser and rendering technologies.
• Contribute production-quality work rather than disposable intern projects.
• Work closely with Dedalus engineers and receive direct, rigorous feedback.
• Own a meaningful project from initial thinking through implementation and refinement.

Requirements

• We care much more about what you have built than your school, credentials, or years of experience.
• Strong ability with React and TypeScript.
• Experience with frameworks such as Next.js, Vite, or Remix.
• Fluency with AI coding tools.
• Strong instincts for responsive design and motion.
• Thoughtful use of styling systems such as Tailwind CSS.
• Good judgment around RSC, streaming, loading states, and perceived performance.
• Evidence that you care about accessibility and Core Web Vitals.
• Modern CSS you are a little smug about.
• A strong personal website demonstrating your taste and craft.
• A public GitHub showing how you think and build.
• Clear evidence of personal ownership over the work you present.
• The ability to explain your decisions, tradeoffs, failed approaches, and hardest technical problems.
• Experience with Motion, GSAP, View Transitions, WebGL, Three.js, React Three Fiber, or similar tools.
• Familiarity with high-performance tooling such as Vite+, Oxc, or related projects.
• Experience with Canvas, shaders, GLSL, or WebGPU.
• Meaningful open-source contributions.
• Tools or techniques we have not heard of yet.
• Experience writing APIs.
• Comfort with Supabase or a similar database.
• Strong knowledge of types.
• Interest in category theory.
• A self-directed project that goes significantly beyond a class assignment.
• Evidence of unusually rapid learning or achievement for your stage.
• Taste
• You know what good looks like—and your work demonstrates it.
• A beautiful portfolio is not enough on its own. We care about the quality of your implementation, the reasoning behind your decisions, the details others overlook, and whether you can turn taste into working software.
• Internship structure
• Applications are accepted throughout the year.
• We typically run four internship seasons annually.
• Each season lasts approximately three months.
• The internship is paid and full-time.
• Start dates are coordinated based on candidate and team availability.
• Interns work on substantive projects with real ownership.
• Exceptional performance may lead to consideration for a full-time position, but conversion is not guaranteed.
• Logistics
• Full-time for approximately three months.
• In person, five days per week, in San Francisco.
• Relocation support may be available.
• Visa support may be available based on individual eligibility and timing.
• This is not a remote internship.
• Application tips
• The first things we look at are your GitHub and personal website. Both are required.
• Show us the best version of yourself:
• The work you are proudest of.
• What you personally designed and built.
• The hardest problem you encountered.
• The decisions and tradeoffs you made.
• What failed and what you learned.
• What you would specifically like to build or accomplish at Dedalus during a three-month season.
• We care more about exceptional work, learning velocity, ownership, and taste than formal credentials.

Conditions

Internship pay is $45-$50 per hour. The monthly range shown above is an approximate equivalent of $7,800-$8,667 at 40 hours per week, averaged over 52 weeks per year. Actual pay is based on hours worked.

Visa: US citizen/visa only