{"id":3558071,"url":"https://alion.io/job/cartesian-systems-iap-software-engineering-intern-2027","title":"IAP Software Engineering Intern 2027","company":{"id":4391902,"name":"Cartesian Systems","domain":"cartesian.systems","url":"https://alion.io/company/cartesian-3","size_band":"1-10","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":null},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"intern","employment_type":"internship","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Cambridge, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":20,"max":25,"currency":"USD","period":"hour","gross":null,"usd_annual":50000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Azure","optional":true},{"name":"FastAPI","optional":true},{"name":"Helm","optional":true},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":true},{"name":"Kotlin","optional":true},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":true},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":true},{"name":"Next.js","optional":true},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":true},{"name":"Python","optional":true},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":true},{"name":"Ray","optional":true},{"name":"React.js","optional":true},{"name":"Tailwind CSS","optional":true},{"name":"Terraform","optional":true},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-16T14:45:24Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-16","last_verified_at":"2026-11-01T23:18:15Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":46,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":46},"description":"Micro-Intern: Software Engineer (IAP - Alumni Host)\nLocation: On-site; Boston/Cambridge, MA;\nDates: Full-Time; January 4, 2027 - January 29, 2027\nCompensation: $20-25/hr\nAbout the Company\nCartesian is building spatial intelligence for indoor environments to drive operational efficiency. We’re tackling one of the biggest challenges in the $35T global retail industry: in-store inventory visibility. Our platform delivers accurate indoor positioning and actionable product location insights, helping retailers streamline operations, optimize workflows, and reduce inefficiencies. Leveraging wireless signals, we provide a uniquely scalable, infrastructure-free solution already deployed by international fashion brands.\nFounded by an MIT engineering professor and alum behind the award-winning, patented core technologies, Cartesian spun out in 2023. Originally backed by the prestigious SBIR Award from the US National Science Foundation, we've bootstrapped to a live product that's now deployed in over a dozen countries and have been aggressively scaling in the market.\nAbout the Role\nWe are scaling up our platform and developing new features to meet product demand.\nWe are looking for a motivated software engineering intern to help us integrate with new customers, improve our core platform, and expand our product capabilities. We are seeking individuals who want to see how to design and develop new technology in a startup environment. You will work alongside senior engineers and ship code to real customers.\nThis role is on-site, and our office is right in Kendall Square by the Red Line stop.\nThe internship will be full-time. IAP is less than a month, and in order to maximize the value of the internship for you and Cartesian, it requires a full-time focus. If you have other commitments over IAP (e.g. clubs or classes), it probably won’t be a good fit.\nWhat You’ll Do\nAt the beginning of IAP, we will define a specific project you will have ownership and responsibility for during internship duration. You will be learning extremely fast, providing clarity to ambiguity, and iterating on feedback each week.\nPotential projects include:\nCustomer Expansion: Developing robust interfaces for data and users with international retail brands.\nPlatform: Modernizing our stack to Infrastructure-as-Code and upgrading our core Postgres platform for performance and resilience. \nResearch Tooling: Work closely with research teams to build infrastructure for machine-learning development and collecting fast, accurate edge-device sensor data.\nSecurity and Tooling: Implementing a new system for enforcing short-lived machine-to-machine credentials, hardening our identity-and-access approach, and automating key rotation.\nUI/UX: Making user interactions between our product and the physical world more seamless, ergonomic, and beautiful. \nOptimization: Instrument and measure our cloud platform costs to optimize infrastructure, application, and development efficiency.\nTesting: Build full-stack test infrastructure across physical devices, mobile, and backend to maintain our bar for high quality and accelerate development.\nThese are just examples, and we will work closely with you to design a project that is important for the company and matches your interests. Please come prepared to your interview with an idea of the type of work you are looking to do over IAP.\nAbout You\nHigh Growth: You're curious and learn fast. You'd rather dig into something unfamiliar than stay in your comfort zone.\nHigh Ownership: Given a task, you break it down with minimal oversight and make sure it gets done - even when it's ambiguous, or the last bit gets messy.\nLow Ego: You don’t know everything. You want the best ideas to win. Nothing is below you.\nStrong Coder: You write clean, working code without heavy hand-holding, and you can explain the \"why\" behind your choices, not just show the result. You’ve worked in large codebases on a team before.\nWhy Now?\nWe’re a fast-moving MIT startup at an important inflection point for our product growth and direction. We are building a talent-dense team of engineers and applied researchers to solve hard, high-impact problems in retail operations.\nThe IAP internship is a great way to see the inner workings of a company going from an initial product to a broadly scaled platform across many customers. You will be able to shape real product and platform decisions.\nTechnology Stack\nBackend: FastAPI, Python, Hatchet\nMobile: Android, Kotlin\nHardware: RFID & Barcode Readers (e.g. Zebra)\nData: Postgres, Blob Storage, Parquet\nInfrastructure: Azure, Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform\nMachine Learning: PyTorch, Ray\nFrontend: Next.js, Typescript, Tailwind\nInterview Process\n Application (30 minutes): Answer the logistical and interest questions.\n Interview (60 minutes): Show us something cool you’ve built. Explain your decisions and what you learned. Ask any questions about the role or company.\n Offer\nNote: We’ve received a large number of applications for this internship in the past. We try our best to review everyone, but sometimes you may not hear back.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5099,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Space & Aerospace","Geospatial Analytics","Geospatial AI"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-31T02:14:03Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 2","filings_12m":2,"filings_prev_12m":1,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":147500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-29T16:27:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":1}],"liveness":{"score":17,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.482,"p_room":0.36,"age_days":45,"expected_fill_days":27,"reasons":["conf:2","win:tail","crowd:junior"],"computed_at":"2026-11-01T06:10:25Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":50000,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/cartesian-systems-iap-software-engineering-intern-2027","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/cartesian-systems-iap-software-engineering-intern-2027.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-02T03:09:05Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":4698,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-03T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":4391902},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=4391902"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fcartesian-systems-iap-software-engineering-intern-2027"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fcartesian-systems-iap-software-engineering-intern-2027"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fcartesian-systems-iap-software-engineering-intern-2027"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/cartesian-systems-iap-software-engineering-intern-2027\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fcartesian-systems-iap-software-engineering-intern-2027"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3558071}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"cartesian.systems","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3558071},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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