How Much Do Software Engineering Interns Make at AI Companies? $40 to $85 an Hour in 22 Postings (Sept. 30, 2026)
On September 30, 2026, 22 of the 25 US software and machine-learning intern postings on 19 AI employers’ own job boards named an hourly rate, and every rate fell between $40 and $85 an hour. The median floor was $70. The biggest single driver was not the company or the city. It was the degree you are working toward: Waymo writes $60 for a bachelor’s student, $70 for a master’s and $85 for a PhD into the posting itself.
What we read on September 30, 2026
We opened every posting with “intern,” “internship” or “co-op” in the title on the public Greenhouse and Ashby job boards of the 19 AI, robotics and autonomy employers we track daily, and read the pay line and the eligibility lines in each one. The same boards feed our AI jobs tracker.
- 61 intern postings in total; 48 in the United States.
- 43 of 48 US postings name an hourly rate; 5 name none, and all 5 are in California.
- 25 US postings are software or machine-learning internships; 22 of them name a rate, $40 to $85 an hour.
- 46 of 48 ask you to be a student, a recent graduate or in a named degree program. 1 does not.
- 0 postings from OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Cursor or ElevenLabs: their boards had no intern roles that morning.
An AI assistant helped draft this piece and run the page reads; every quote was read on the source’s own page on the date shown.
How much do software engineering interns make at AI companies?
Software and machine-learning interns at AI companies are posted at $40 to $85 an hour: that is the full range across the 22 US postings that named a rate on September 30, 2026. The median lowest rate a posting names is $70.
Most of those postings are Waymo’s. It had 36 US intern roles open, all for summer 2027, and 21 of the 22 priced software and ML postings are Waymo’s. The other one is Mercor’s Software Engineer Intern in San Francisco at “$40 – $75 per hour.”
Outside software the rates drop. Figure AI posts $40 to $45 an hour for its electrical engineering and special projects interns in San Jose. 1X posts $35 for manufacturing engineering and $30 for its CNC shop. Nuro’s social media intern is posted at a “base hourly rate” of $30.
So the honest answer depends on what “software engineering intern” means to you. At a large, well-funded autonomy company it is $60 to $85. At a startup it can start at $40.
Why does Waymo pay a PhD intern $25 an hour more than a bachelor’s intern?
Waymo sets one hourly rate per degree level, printed in each posting: $60 for bachelor’s students, $70 for master’s students, $85 for PhD students and $50 for MBA students. The team and the project do not change the number. A bachelor’s student on Depot Automation and one on Embedded Software get the same $60.
Postings open to two levels list two rates. A “BS/MS” posting shows “Hourly Bachelors Pay $60” and a master’s line at $70; an “MS/PhD” posting shows $70 and $85. The rate follows you, not the job.
The surprise is the MBA line. An MBA intern in Operations Planning or Strategic Finance is posted at $50 an hour, $10 less than an undergraduate writing code. That runs against the usual story that business school interns out-earn everyone. At an engineering-led company, the ladder follows the engineering degree.
Each Waymo intern pay line is written as a range with the same number at both ends, “$60 — $60 USD.” For the company’s full-time roles, see our count of Waymo’s whole board.
What does an AI internship pay over a whole summer?
At 40 hours a week for 12 weeks, the posted rates work out to $14,400 at $30 an hour and $40,800 at $85 an hour, before tax. Figure AI states a minimum of 10 weeks; the other postings we read do not state a length, so treat 12 weeks as an assumption.
| Posting | Rate in posting | 12 weeks x 40 hours | Other money named |
|---|---|---|---|
| Waymo, PhD | $85/hr | $40,800 | “Generous benefits programs, subject to eligibility” |
| Waymo, bachelor’s | $60/hr | $28,800 | Same benefits line |
| Mercor, software engineer | $40–$75/hr | $19,200–$36,000 | $1.5K monthly meal stipend |
| Figure AI, electrical engineering | $40–$45/hr | $19,200–$21,600 | None named |
| 1X, manufacturing engineering | $35/hr | $16,800 | $2,500 monthly housing stipend for relocation |
| 1X, CNC Machine Park | $30/hr | $14,400 | Paid time off, catered lunches |
The housing line can matter as much as the rate. 1X’s $2,500 monthly housing stipend adds about $7,500 over three months to a $35 rate, which puts that internship closer to Figure’s range than the hourly number suggests. Mercor’s data science posting also lists a relocation and a housing bonus in its benefits, but it does not say whether interns receive them, so we leave them out.
If you ran Waymo’s $85 PhD rate for a full working year of 2,080 hours, it would be $176,800. Internships do not run a full year. That annualized figure is the kind salary sites often show, and it is why their intern numbers can look strange.
Why do salary websites give such different intern numbers?
Salary websites estimate intern pay from self-reports and annualize it; a posting states the rate the employer expects to pay. All ten web results we pulled for “how much do software engineering interns make” on September 30, 2026 were salary-data pages: Glassdoor (four pages), ZipRecruiter (three), Indeed, Comparably and a Levels.fyi page for Google interns.
We tried to open eight of them. Six returned an HTTP 403 error to our reader and Levels.fyi came back in a form we could not read, so we do not quote their numbers. Comparably loaded, and says “the average Software Engineering Intern in the US makes $95,969”, a yearly figure for a job that lasts a summer, with no hourly rate beside it.
None of the pages we could read cited a single employer posting. That is the gap this count fills. California, Colorado, New York and Washington require many employers to print a pay range in the posting, so for an intern applying in those states the posting is a better number than any average. We explain those laws in why some job postings do not show salary.
Why do five California internship postings show no pay?
Five of the 48 US intern postings named no rate on September 30, 2026, and all five are in California. They are Scale AI’s Software Engineering Intern in San Francisco, Sierra’s Software Engineer Intern in San Francisco, Nuro’s Software Engineer, AI Platform intern in Mountain View, and two at Physical Intelligence in San Francisco.
California’s Labor Commissioner, on a page we read the same day, states: “An employer with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale for a position in any job posting.” The same page says the pay scale must be in “a job posting itself,” not behind a link.
We are not lawyers, and we are not saying any of these companies broke the law. An employer can show pay on another page we did not read, or count its staff differently. What we can say is narrower: on the pages a student sees, there was no number. One of the two Physical Intelligence postings, “Research Internships,” contains a single word of text and was first published on August 24, 2024.
If a posting in California has no range, you can ask for it. California Labor Code section 432.3(c)(1) says an employer, “upon reasonable request, shall provide the pay scale for a position to an applicant.”
Can you get an AI internship without being in college?
Almost never: 46 of the 48 US intern postings we read on September 30, 2026 ask you to be enrolled, graduating soon, or in a named degree program. Scale AI wants “a graduation date in Fall 2027 or Spring 2028.” Mercor wants you “pursuing a degree” and “graduating 2026–2028.” Waymo puts the degree right in the title: BS, MS, PhD or MBA.
The one exception is 1X’s CNC Machine Park intern in Hayward, California, at $30 an hour. Its minimum requirements are a “genuine interest in manufacturing,” comfort in a shop and reliable attendance. Under preferred skills it lists “Prior coursework, vocational training, or hobby experience with machining, fabrication, or shop tools.” It names no school at all.
The posting also says what it leads to: “the goal of becoming a strong candidate for a full-time technical role.” For someone at a community college or a trade program, that is the rare internship door in AI hardware. The same path shows up in our guides to robotics technician jobs without a degree and humanoid robot operator jobs.
When do AI companies post summer 2027 internships?
Waymo first published 35 of its 36 US summer 2027 intern postings between September 1 and September 29, 2026, so the season is open now. The earliest went up August 28. Twelve went up between September 23 and September 29 alone.
Waymo’s postings say it will “accept resumes on a rolling basis until the role is filled,” and that to be considered for several roles “you will need to apply to each one individually — please apply to the top 3 roles you are interested in.” Rolling means early applications are read first.
Two other boards are on a different clock. Figure AI’s intern postings are for Fall 2026 and ask for “Minimum 10 weeks internship, 1 to 2 terms preferred.” Sierra’s summer 2027 posting says its program is open to students graduating December 2027 to June 2028. Our earlier piece on when summer 2027 internships open tracks the opening dates week by week.
Five moves for a student applying to AI internships this fall
- Read the pay line before you apply. Search the posting for “hourly.” If a California posting has no number, ask for the pay scale in your first recruiter email.
- Pick your three Waymo roles on purpose. The company asks for your top 3, and your degree, not the team, sets the rate, so choose on the work.
- Price the summer, not the hour. Multiply the rate by 40 and by the weeks offered, then add or subtract housing. $35 with a $2,500 monthly stipend can beat $45 without one.
- Set an alert on the employers you want. Waymo added twelve intern postings in a week. Our guide to job alerts for specific companies shows how, and the jobs board lists every open role with a link to apply on the employer’s site.
- If you are not enrolled, look at the shop floor. 1X’s CNC intern asks for no school. Hardware companies are where that door opens.
Four rules that keep internship hunting safe
We are not recruiters and take no money from employers; postings close without notice, and the official page wins. A real internship never asks you to pay for training or equipment, never sends a check for you to deposit and forward, and never makes an offer by text alone. Apply only on the employer’s own domain. More in our sources and scam guide.
How we read 48 postings, and what the boards could not tell us
On the morning of September 30, 2026 we pulled every job from the public Greenhouse and Ashby APIs of our 19 tracked employers and kept titles containing intern, internship or co-op. We opened each posting’s full text and read its pay line. Google DeepMind’s old Greenhouse board still returns 404, so it is not in the count.
Waymo’s pay lines say “Hourly Bachelors Pay $60 — $60 USD” and the posting calls it “the expected hourly rate.” Nuro’s social media rate is written as a sentence, so we read it by eye. We counted a posting as US unless its location was outside the country; two Perplexity postings in Belgrade and a Scale AI posting in Doha were set aside.
What we could not see: the number of weeks at most companies, whether perks listed in a benefits section apply to interns, and what anyone was actually paid. Postings state an expected rate; offers can differ. This is also a count of 19 employers, not the whole market. The bigger picture of entry roles is in our count of entry-level AI jobs.
Watch the humanoid company behind the $30 shop internship
1X, whose CNC intern is the one posting that asks for no school, builds the NEO home robot; its posting says every bracket and precision part for NEO starts in that Hayward machine shop. This Wall Street Journal test shows the robot.
What Waymo pays by degree, and whether every AI internship pays
How much do software engineering interns make?
At AI companies, $40 to $85 an hour. On September 30, 2026, 22 of 25 US software and machine-learning intern postings on 19 AI employers’ boards named a rate in that range, with a median floor of $70.
How much do Waymo interns make?
Waymo’s 2027 summer intern postings list $60 an hour for bachelor’s students, $70 for master’s, $85 for PhD and $50 for MBA students.
How much do tech internships pay over a summer?
At 40 hours a week for 12 weeks, the posted AI-company rates come to $14,400 at $30 an hour and $40,800 at $85 an hour, before tax. Most postings do not state the number of weeks.
Do AI internships pay more for a PhD?
At Waymo, yes: $85 an hour for a PhD student against $60 for a bachelor’s student, a $25 difference set by degree, not by team.
Can I get an AI internship without a degree?
Rarely. 46 of 48 US intern postings we read on September 30, 2026 required enrollment or a degree program. The exception was 1X’s CNC Machine Park intern in Hayward, California, at $30 an hour.
Are AI internships paid?
Every US intern posting that named pay on September 30, 2026 was paid, from $30 to $85 an hour. Five California postings named no rate at all.
After the internship: full-time pay, PhDs and Anthropic’s Fellows
For the full-time pay you are aiming at, see which AI company pays the most and why salary ranges are so wide. If you wonder whether the PhD is worth the $25, read do you need a PhD to work in AI. If you do not code, these AI jobs do not require it.
The frontier labs had no intern postings this week. Anthropic’s paid path for newcomers is its Fellows program, covered in is Anthropic hiring right now, and is Figure AI hiring covers the robot company in this count. Before you send anything, check whether you need a cover letter and whether you can opt out of AI resume screening.
Want us to check a company or city for you? Ask the desk and we will read the board.
Cite this
On September 30, 2026, 22 of 25 US software and machine-learning intern postings on 19 AI employers’ own job boards named an hourly rate between $40 and $85; Waymo posted $60 for bachelor’s, $70 for master’s, $85 for PhD and $50 for MBA students, and 5 of 48 US intern postings, all in California, named no pay. Source: profhlab.com AI Jobs Desk, How Much Do Software Engineering Interns Make at AI Companies?
Sources read on September 30, 2026: the public Greenhouse and Ashby job boards of Waymo, Scale AI, Mercor, Perplexity, Cohere, Sierra, Figure AI, 1X, Physical Intelligence, Nuro and nine other tracked employers, with the full text of every intern posting; Waymo 2027 Summer Intern, BS, Depot Automation (first published September 28, 2026); California Labor Commissioner, Equal Pay Act and pay transparency FAQ; Comparably, software engineering intern salary. Photos via Wikimedia Commons under the licenses shown. Postings close without notice — the employer’s own page wins.
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