Substrate builds financial infrastructure to grow industrial GDP.
We're hiring a systems software engineer intern who has tackled hard technical problems help us build core 0→1 systems at the intersection of software, hardware, and finance. You'll help architect and ship systems that power machine shops, farms, factories, construction contractors, and more.
Substrate engineering interns have immense ownership to lead full-stack product cycles end-to-end, from customer discovery to production deployment. You'll get to occasionally travel with the founder to factory floors, meet Main Street manufacturers and Wall Street lenders face-to-face, and build exactly what the field demands.
Given the technical complexity of our product and the high degree of ownership we trust interns with, we've found engineers typically take 6-8 weeks to fully onboard and lead their own projects. Therefore, we strongly prefer candidates who can commit to an 8-month+ internship. We occasionally make exceptions for those who are truly exceptional.
Why consider Substrate amidst your sea of options:You believe in objective good and beauty, and you want to bring them to an antiquated, predatory industry.
You believe not all technology is created equal. You don’t care about building another enterprise SaaS tool, you want to build tools that advance civilization.
You want to work with people who treat their work as craft, who violently reject “just good enough,” and you want to help build that culture.
Wrap beautiful and simple abstractions around gnarly complexity and legacy systems
Own full product lifecycle—from customer pain → full-stack design → 0-to-1 full-stack engineering → ship product
Design and deploy production-grade LLM systems that automate core loan operations (e.g., underwriting, compliance, document processing)
Help build a product culture that harmonizes speed, taste, and customer obsession
You've solved hard technical problems most of your peers haven't encountered — and you can explain exactly how your solution works to extreme depth
You gravitate toward thinking in systems, infrastructure, and architectural tradeoffs
You have strong opinions about what good abstractions look like
You have deep experience with Node.js, TypeScript, Postgres, and AWS
You prefer hard backend problems, but are comfortable building frontends and have UI design taste
You resonate with our engineering philosophy
If you are interested, please apply via Dover AND email [email protected] with the following (your app won't be considered without these):
If you could have one person's career arc, who would it be and why?
What's an unpopular truth you believe in?
What's the most technically challenging system you've ever built? Include the tech stack you chose, why you chose them other alternatives, key technical challenges and how you solved them, and any architectural tradeoffs you had to make.
Availability for a 30min call
Skills Required
- Strong experience with Node.js, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, and AWS
- Experience solving technically difficult problems and explaining solutions in depth
- Interest in systems, infrastructure, and architectural tradeoffs
- Ability to build backend systems and comfort developing frontend applications
- Strong opinions about software abstractions and UI design taste
- Ability to commit to an internship lasting 8 months or longer
What We Do
Substrate was founded to return the United States to dominance in semiconductor fabrication. We invent technology to extend Moore's Law while reducing costs of leading-edge fabs and the wafers they produce.
