Espa is an AI-native executive assistant service that manages the logistics of work and personal life for founders, small business owners, executives, creators and individuals.
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING INTERN (WINTER/SPRING/SUMMER 2026) — AGENTIC AI STARTUP Location: San Francisco, CA (Hybrid or Remote-First) Type: Full-Time Internship (10–14 weeks, depending on academic calendar) Compensation: Competitive stipend ABOUT US We are an early-stage AI startup building the first AI-native productivity assistant that seamlessly integrates into your digital life to handle email, calendars, contacts, and tasks and make sure you never drop the ball. Backed by leading venture capital firms including Village Global, Neo, SV Angel, and researchers and executives from Anthropic, Microsoft, Cognition, Quora, Atlassian, and Waymo, we’re assembling a world-class founding team passionate about building scalable, human-aligned AI systems that transform how life gets done. Our founding team includes repeat entrepreneurs, AI researchers, and early engineers from companies such as Meta, Palantir, Dropbox, and Databricks. Collectively, we’ve built products used by millions, led teams at unicorn-stage AI companies, raised over $100 million in venture capital, and achieved exits to Fortune 500 firms. Together, we bring deep expertise across AI systems design, large-scale engineering, and growth at the intersection of technology and human productivity. THE ROLE As a Software Engineering Intern, you’ll work closely with our founding team to help design, prototype, and scale components of our agentic AI assistant. This is a hands-on opportunity to do work at the intersection of systems design thinking with AI engineering fundamentals, contributing directly to the architecture and functionality of real, production-bound technology. You’ll have mentorship from experienced engineers and founders building next-generation AI systems and gain valuable exposure to startup operations, while maintaining meaningful ownership over your projects and deliverables. WHAT YOU’LL DO - Collaborate with engineers to design and implement core infrastructure and backend components. - Develop core features across the AI stack — including orchestration logic, API integrations, and LLM-based workflows. - Build diagnostic tools, write test cases, and implement monitoring systems for reliability and consistency. - Contribute to the design and improvement of our agent reasoning and execution pipelines. - Participate in product and architecture discussions with the founding team. - Document bugs, issues, and edge cases; help refine and stabilize our platform for launch-readiness. WHO YOU ARE - Currently pursuing a BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, AI, or related field (or equivalent experience). - Strong foundation in software engineering and systems design thinking — you enjoy reasoning about architecture, scalability, and tradeoffs. - Experience with Python, JavaScript, or Go; familiarity with AI frameworks (e.g. LangChain, LlamaIndex, or similar) is a plus. - Interest or prior experience in agent development, LLM APIs, or applied AI engineering. - Excited by early-stage environments and fast-paced, iterative work. - Available full-time for one academic quarter or semester in Winter/Spring/Summer 2026. NICE TO HAVE - Experience building prototypes or projects that integrate AI models or autonomous agents. - Exposure to distributed systems, vector databases, or API orchestration. - Previous internship or research experience in applied AI or software engineering. - Contributions to open-source or personal AI/automation projects. WHAT YOU’LL GAIN - Direct mentorship from experienced AI and systems engineers. - Opportunity to work on cutting-edge agentic AI technology in a startup environment. - End-to-end ownership of meaningful projects that may evolve into core product features. - Exposure to startup operations, product iteration, and the engineering culture of an early-stage team.