Summer Intern - Advertising Engineering

Join the future of news

We’re on a mission to deliver riveting storytelling for all of America. At The Washington Post, you’ll help reinvent news. Our work is driven by a deep investigative spirit and enhanced by innovation to bring audiences closer to the stories that matter most.

About Our Team

The Washington Post is powered by the passion and talent of our people. It takes all of us to reinvent news. Beyond our award-winning Newsroom and Opinions teams, we work across many departments, including Brand & Events, Communications, Customer Care, Engineering & Product, Finance, Human Resources, Legal, Marketing & Advertising, Print Operations, and Sales.

Why This Role Matters

This internship offers a unique opportunity to work alongside the Advertising Engineering team, contributing directly to our product roadmap. You will gain invaluable, hands-on experience by working on high-impact production systems that manage user data, complex data infrastructure, real-time and high-speed client-side code, and back- and front-end systems that must function under significant user scale.

Under the mentorship of experienced engineers, you will contribute meaningful code improvements, develop a strong engineering discipline, cultivate system-level thinking, and gain a practical understanding of how large-scale, high-reliability platforms operate.

What Motivates You

• Solving complex engineering problems closely tied to code performance.
• A strong eagerness to learn how real-world systems operate at high scale.
• Opportunities to work on and understand the essential systems that underlie how media companies and most of the web make money.

How You’ll Support The Mission

You will support The Washington Post's mission by delivering high-quality engineering contributions to the Identity platform, specifically by:

• Building high-performance user-facing code.
• Building and maintaining reliable, secure backend services.
• Working on innovative ad technology and approaches that can directly unlock revenue for The Washington Post
• Ensuring high standards in all engineering work.
• Collaborating effectively with teammates to ensure Advertising systems scale safely and consistently across the organization.

The Skills And Experience You Bring

• Strong frontend engineering fundamentals and experience working with APIs and both modern JavaScript frameworks and vanilla JavaScript.
• A mindset for scale and speed, meticulous attention to detail, and a strong willingness to learn.
• Demonstrated ability to write reliable, maintainable code and collaborate effectively within a team environment.
• Highly Desirable: Experience with modern websites, work on LLM projects focused on text analysis, and engagement with marketing and advertising technology.

Interns are paid hourly and expected to work 35-40 hours per week.

Our internship program is based out of our D.C. office, so you are expected to be on-site for the summer and follow The Washington Post’s in-person work policy. We do not provide housing, but can suggest options upon request. You must be enrolled in a degree-seeking program at the time of submitting this application. We encourage you to apply if you are currently a student, regardless of your background or experience with engineering and/or journalism.

Foreign nationals can apply for internships. All work samples must be submitted in English. If selected, the required documentation to verify U.S. work authorization must be provided. The Post is unable to provide visa sponsorship for internships. If you have any questions, please reach out to [email protected]

We will review all applications and invite a subset of applicants to the next process, which includes live coding and interviews with team leads.

Our program provides a meaningful learning experience for engineers who support The Washington Post's mission. Our interns work directly with our full-time engineers on real production features.

Additionally, you'll be invited to exclusive events like our annual intern hackathon and lunch seminars from leaders across the company.

This internship is not a guarantee of a job at The Post. We have hired from our internship classes in the past, and we hope to continue this trend in the coming years. Note our internship program is not a binding contract — you can take a full-time job elsewhere or from your (or another!) team at The Post before the internship ends.

Collaboration makes us stronger. That’s why our offices are designed with open layouts, modern technology, and easy access to transportation. With certain exceptions for newsgathering and business travel, we work on-site five days a week.

Your story awaits. Apply today!

Learn more about The Post at careers.washingtonpost.com.