Quick Facts
Rippling internship · at a glance
five intern roles went live on the Rippling ATS on September 21, 2026 (Full Stack SWE, Backend SWE, ML SWE, Data Science), verified live September 27, 2026. Apply early, and check the portal for every live role.
Before you applyWould your profile get you in?6 questions, under a minute. Compared with real interns who landed similar roles.Check my oddsAlso in this guide
Put real project work on your résumé, with the Wayfair AI Agent Engineering Externship or the TruBridge Healthcare Data Analytics Externship.
Explore all externships →All quick facts
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Where to apply | rippling.com/careers or the Rippling ATS. Filter for intern roles and apply when postings go live |
| Application window (2027–28) | Open now for Summer 2027: five intern roles went live on the Rippling ATS on September 21, 2026 (Full Stack SWE, Backend SWE, ML SWE, Data Science), verified live September 27, 2026. No closing date is posted and review is rolling, so apply this week. A Winter 2027 ML SWE intern posting is also live |
| Rolling? | Yes. Rippling recruits on a rolling basis. HackerRank assessments are sent shortly after application, sometimes within days. Offers roll through February. Earlier applicants are more likely to secure a spot |
| Eligibility | Enrolled in a Bachelor's or Master's in CS or related field, graduating after the internship. Backend roles require previous Python internship or co-op experience. Posting encourages applying even if not all requirements are met |
| Duration | 13 weeks confirmed (Winter 2027 posting). Summer session runs approximately May through August |
| Compensation | $75/hr ($13,000/month) in San Francisco for Summer 2026. $66–$68/hr in NYC. Housing stipend of $2,000–$2,500/month plus $650–$1,000 relocation. Estimated total 13-week SF comp: approximately $47,500 |
| Visa sponsorship | Rippling hires international students (confirmed via Reddit). F-1 visa holders typically use CPT authorization. No Rippling-specific intern visa policy page found, but as an HR/visa management platform, the company is well-versed in immigration |
| Locations | San Francisco (HQ), New York City, Seattle, Bangalore. Hybrid: 3 days in-office, 2 days remote. Fully remote internships are not available |
| # Programs | 150+ interns across at least 4 tracks: Backend SWE, Full-Stack SWE, Product Team placements, and Platform Engineering. Non-engineering intern roles also exist. Summer, Winter, and occasional Fall sessions |
Last updated: November 2026
Rippling pays its San Francisco software engineering interns up to $75 per hour, roughly $13,000 a month, making it one of the highest-paying startup internships in tech. The company doubled its intern class to over 150 seats for 2026, is valued at $16.8 billion after a Series G led by Kleiner Perkins and Founders Fund, and claims one of the highest intern-to-full-time conversion rates in the industry. Summer 2027 applications are open now: Rippling posted five Summer 2027 intern roles on September 21, 2026 (Full Stack and Backend Software Engineer in San Francisco, New York, and Seattle, plus Machine Learning Software Engineer and Data Science in San Francisco), and the SWE postings list $10,500 a month. With rolling admissions and a DSA-heavy HackerRank OA as the first gate, preparation and early submission are the two levers you control.
What Is a Rippling Internship?
A Rippling internship is a paid, 13-week, hybrid placement where you build and ship production features used by over 20,000 businesses. Rippling is not a single product but a compound platform spanning HR, IT, and Finance with more than 20 products sharing one employee graph. Interns are placed onto a specific product or platform engineering team from day one, paired with a dedicated mentor and manager, and given projects scoped to be completed within the internship window. Past intern projects include building the 1:1s product for Performance Management, leading self-serve flight upgrades for the Travel product, and shipping semantic search with Google Drive integration for the Help Center, all still in production today. The work model is hybrid: three days in office, two days remote, at the San Francisco, New York, Seattle, or Bangalore offices. Rippling doubled its intern class to over 150 for 2026 and claims one of the highest intern-to-full-time conversion rates in the industry, with featured interns all returning as full-time Software Engineers and one already promoted to SWE II.

When Do Rippling Internship Applications Open for 2027–2028?
Rippling's internship calendar follows a roughly annual pattern with rolling admissions. For the Summer 2026 cycle, applications opened in fall 2025 with HackerRank OAs sent within days and offers rolling through early 2026. The Winter 2027 backend intern posting was already live by mid-2026, confirming that Rippling runs multiple sessions per year. The Summer 2027 cycle opened on September 21, 2026, when five intern postings went live, with interviews expected to run through January and offers extending through February. The critical insight: HackerRank assessments are sent almost immediately after application, so you need to be ready for the OA before you hit submit, not after.
Summer 2027 postings are live: Rippling opened Full Stack SWE, Backend SWE, ML SWE, and Data Science intern roles on September 21, 2026, with no posted closing date. Apply this week, then keep drilling while you wait for the OA: drill LeetCode medium-to-hard problems on graph traversal, dynamic programming, and string manipulation. If targeting full-stack roles, sharpen JavaScript, HTML, and CSS fundamentals.
Summer 2027 internship postings went live on the Rippling ATS. Apply within the first week: Rippling sends HackerRank OAs within days of application on a rolling basis, and seats fill as offers are extended. Late applicants face fewer open positions.
The interview funnel: HackerRank OA (4 MCQs plus 2–3 coding problems, medium-to-hard DSA), then 1–2 live technical interviews on HackerRank (60 minutes each). Full-stack roles add a Web Fundamentals round testing JS, HTML, and CSS.
Offers extended on a rolling basis. Decisions come relatively quickly after the final interview. Rippling claims one of the highest intern-to-full-time conversion rates in the industry, so accept with the full-time pipeline in mind.
13 weeks, hybrid (3 days in-office, 2 remote), approximately May through August. You ship production code from day one with a dedicated mentor and manager. Past intern features are still used by Rippling's 20,000-plus customers today.
How to read this page: our dates come from tracking previous recruiting cycles and daily posting data. Treat them as informed estimates based on historical patterns, not confirmed dates. The company's official careers page is always the most current source. If a role is posted there, go by that, even if this page suggests the window hasn't opened yet.
Why You Must Apply the Week Applications Open
Rolling review is the mechanism, not a footnote. Rippling reviews applications as they arrive, sends HackerRank assessments within days of submission, and extends offers through February on a rolling basis. With over 150 intern seats and a $16.8 billion valuation drawing thousands of applicants, early submission captures more open positions and fresher reviewer attention. Reddit posts from the Winter 2027 cycle show HackerRank invites arriving almost immediately after application, confirming that the pipeline moves fast and you need to be OA-ready before you apply, not after. By late fall, most seats are spoken for. So set a job alert on rippling.com/careers and submit the week postings go live. The HackerRank OA is the highest-leverage preparation you can do, because that is where the funnel is narrowest.
Which Rippling Internship Programs Should You Target?
Rippling runs its internships as direct team placements across product and platform engineering. You are hired into a specific team and expected to ship production-ready features by the end of your 13 weeks. The company doubled its intern class to over 150 for 2026, spanning these tracks:
| Program | Focus | Duration | Key skills |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software Engineer Intern (Backend) | Server-side systems on Rippling's compound platform: HR, IT, and Finance products sharing one employee graph. Python-heavy with production feature ownership | 13 weeks | Python, data structures and algorithms, backend systems, REST APIs, production-quality code |
| Software Engineer Intern (Full-Stack) | Frontend and full-stack development on user-facing products. Interview includes a dedicated Web Fundamentals round | 13 weeks | JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Python, React, cross-functional collaboration |
| Product Team Intern | Placed on a specific product team building user-facing features with end-to-end ownership. Real examples: Performance Management (1:1s), Travel (flight upgrades), Help Center (semantic search) | 13 weeks | Full-stack development, product thinking, API design, feature scoping |
| Platform Engineering Intern | Foundational infrastructure powering the Rippling platform. Focus on the abstraction layer enabling Rippling's compound-product architecture | 13 weeks | Python, system design, distributed systems, infrastructure abstractions, scalability |
See every open role on rippling.com/careers. Non-engineering intern roles (Product Management, Design, Marketing, Sales) are mentioned in the context of the 150-plus intern program but have not been individually verified in current postings.
What Are the Eligibility Requirements?
Rippling's requirements are drawn from the confirmed Winter 2027 Backend Intern posting and historical hiring data:
• Enrollment: currently enrolled in a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or a related field. Must be graduating after the internship's completion.
• Prior experience: backend roles explicitly require previous internship or co-op experience in software engineering using Python. This is listed as a requirement, not a preference, though the posting encourages applying even if not all requirements are met.
• Year in school: most Levels.fyi data points show juniors, but at least one freshman-level intern was hired for Summer 2025 in NYC, suggesting flexibility in year requirements.
• Work authorization: Rippling hires international students, confirmed via Reddit threads showing international students choosing between Rippling and other companies. F-1 visa holders typically use CPT authorization for internships. No Rippling-specific visa sponsorship policy page exists for interns, but as an HR and visa management platform, the company is well-versed in immigration processes.

Does Rippling Have a GPA Cutoff?
No minimum GPA appears in any observed Rippling internship posting. The emphasis falls on prior coding experience, DSA fluency demonstrated through the HackerRank OA, and the ability to write production-quality code in a live interview. The posting itself states: 'Even if you don't meet all of the requirements listed here, we still encourage you to apply. Skills can be used in lots of different ways and your life and professional experience may be relevant beyond what our list of requirements has outlined.' So a strong OA score and evidence of Python-based engineering work carry more weight than a transcript number.
Profile Match · Extern Data
Could You Get In at Rippling? Compare Your Profile
Based on 403 software engineering interns who started their first software internship between 2024 and 2026 (public LinkedIn profiles, aggregated). Six questions, under a minute.
Which summer are you applying for?
Recruiting timelines differ by class year, so we compare you with the right group.
Which group is your school closest to?
Firms recruit on campus in tiers. We match you against admits from schools like yours.
Is your major computer science, software engineering, data science or electrical engineering?
Almost every software intern in our data studied one of these. Other majors get in, but the coursework has to show elsewhere.
How many internships, externships or research positions have you held so far?
Count anything with a real employer, mentor or principal investigator attached. Retail and food service do not count.
Has any of that experience been tech-related?
Software, data, IT, engineering or a research lab. Any size of company counts.
Do you have at least one project on your resume or LinkedIn?
Personal, class, hackathon or open-source projects all count.
Aggregated from public LinkedIn profiles of people who held the internship. No individual profile is shown. Read the cross-industry study of 2,500+ intern profiles.
What Skills Does Rippling Look For, and How Do You Build Them?
Read across the confirmed Winter 2027 Backend Intern posting, the full-stack interview pattern, three intern project descriptions from Rippling's official blog, and Glassdoor and Reddit interview reports, and the pattern is clear. Data structures and algorithms appear in every source, production-quality code expectations in every source, and Python in four of five. JavaScript and frontend skills appear in three, cross-functional communication in four, and adaptability in four. But the skill distribution reveals Rippling's bias: DSA fluency is tested twice (once in the OA, once in the live interview) and is the single largest filter in the pipeline. Everything else matters, but you only see everything else if you clear the OA first.
What Rippling looks for in interns
Skills across 5 Rippling intern & analyst job descriptions · 1 confirmed backend intern JD, 1 full-stack interview pattern, 3 intern project descriptions from official blog, projecting 2027
Method: full-text analysis of one confirmed Rippling Winter 2027 Backend SWE Intern JD (ATS posting), one full-stack intern interview description (Reddit/Glassdoor), and three intern project write-ups from the official 2026 internship blog post. DSA is tested in both the HackerRank OA and the live technical interview, making it the highest-leverage skill to prepare.
How Is Demand for Software Engineering Interns Moving Right Now?
Software engineer intern postings · Jul–Oct 2026
all internships 2.5×
For Rippling applicants: Software engineer intern hiring is at or near its season high, in step with internships overall; this is the busiest stretch of the cycle, so get Rippling applications in now.
Daily US job-posting counts, Jul–Oct 2026; each bar is that month's daily average. Growth = October vs July; “all internships” = the 48 intern searches tracked across the whole period. Covers under half of US postings; shows direction, not market size.
Build These Skills Before You Apply
And every skill in that chart maps to a remote Externship where you finish a real project before a role opens.
| Skill (from real JDs) | JD evidence | Externship that builds it |
|---|---|---|
| Python, backend development & production-quality code | Backend Intern JD: "previous internship/co-op experience in software engineering utilizing Python," "solid programming skills with emphasis on backend" | Wayfair AI Agent Engineering |
| Data analysis, metrics-driven decisions & cross-functional communication | All roles: "excellent communication skills to work cross-functionally," production features serving 20,000+ businesses | TruBridge Healthcare Data Analytics |
| Full-stack product development & API design | Full-Stack JD: "JavaScript, HTML, CSS," intern projects: semantic search, Google Drive integration, flight booking systems | Wayfair AI Agent Engineering |
How close is the overlap? The Wayfair project is agent-engineering work that yields the Python and backend evidence Rippling's interview explicitly requires, and the TruBridge project ends on the data-analysis and cross-functional communication story that rounds out a Rippling behavioral conversation.
What Is the Rippling Application and Interview Process Like?
Rippling's funnel is a compact, rolling pipeline with the HackerRank OA as the primary filter:
1. Apply on rippling.com/careers or the Rippling ATS. Filter for intern roles and submit with your resume. No cover letter requirement. Apply within the first week of postings going live: rolling review rewards early applicants.
2. HackerRank Online Assessment. Sent within days of application. Four multiple-choice questions plus two to three coding problems (reports vary). Medium-to-hard DSA: graph traversal, dynamic programming, arrays, and string manipulation. This is the single largest filter in the pipeline.
3. Live technical interview (60 minutes). One HackerRank live coding session with a new medium-to-hard DSA problem. For full-stack roles, a second 60-minute Web Fundamentals round testing JavaScript, HTML, and CSS implementation. Interviewers expect clean, well-structured, production-quality code.
4. Offer decision. Rolling, within days of the final interview. Offers extend through February. Rippling claims one of the highest intern-to-full-time conversion rates in the industry, so accept with the full-time pipeline in mind.
So the one skill to drill is clear: data structures and algorithms at LeetCode medium-to-hard difficulty, especially graph traversal, dynamic programming, and string manipulation, on the HackerRank platform specifically. Reddit posts consistently describe the OA as "DSA heavy" and "quite tough." For full-stack candidates, add a focused block on JavaScript, HTML, and CSS fundamentals. The entire process can move from application to offer in under a month if you are prepared.
What Students on Reddit Say
Rippling generates active discussion on r/csMajors and r/leetcode. Three threads capture the intern experience, all paraphrased.
When choosing between Rippling and a bigger-name company like Google, the community notes that Rippling typically offers more compensation and faster learning velocity from shipping production code, though Google still carries more resume weight for future opportunities.
Candidates who received both Block and Rippling intern offers describe both as strong brand-name internships, with the community treating them as comparable in prestige and suggesting that compensation and team fit should drive the decision.
The community consensus on Rippling's culture is that it has improved over time, with a fast-paced, high-ownership environment where you ship real code quickly, though work-life balance can be demanding and management quality varies by team.
How Do You Stand Out When 150 Seats Draw Thousands of Applicants?
Three moves, all before applications open. First, apply in week one and clear the HackerRank OA fast. The OA is sent within days of application, and rolling review rewards early completion. Drill LeetCode mediums and hards on graph traversal, dynamic programming, and string manipulation until your accuracy is consistent, because the OA is where most applicants fall. Second, build backend evidence with Python. The posting explicitly requires previous internship or co-op experience in Python-based software engineering, so a finished project or Externship where you shipped production code in Python is not optional, it is what the requirement line is asking for. Third, study Rippling's compound-product architecture. The company builds 20-plus products on one employee graph spanning HR, IT, and Finance. Being able to articulate how you would design a feature that touches multiple data domains shows the product thinking that separates you from a candidate who only solved the OA.

What Other Companies Should You Consider?
Rippling competes for engineering interns with high-growth tech and fintech companies. If you are building a tech-internship list, these are the obvious neighbors:
- StripeFintech infrastructure company with comparable growth-stage energy, engineering rigor, and competitive intern compensationGuide →
- GoogleThe largest SWE intern program in tech, with broader role diversity and stronger resume signal but lower per-hour payGuide →
- MicrosoftEnterprise software leader with massive intern cohorts, structured programs, and a hybrid work culture similar to Rippling'sGuide →
- DatabricksEnterprise data platform with growth-stage culture, strong engineering bar, and comparable technical interview difficultyGuide →
- Scale AIData infrastructure company with comparable startup velocity and a fast-growing engineering intern classGuide →
For the wider field, see our finance internships summer 2027 guide.
Our tech internships summer 2027 guide maps the whole landscape, timeline by timeline.

FAQ
How much do Rippling interns get paid?
Rippling SWE interns in San Francisco earned up to $75 per hour ($13,000 per month) in Summer 2026, with a $2,000 to $2,500 per month housing stipend and a $650 to $1,000 relocation stipend. NYC rates are comparable at $66 to $68 per hour. Total summer compensation in SF can reach approximately $47,500 for a 13-week internship.
Is it hard to get a Rippling internship?
Rippling is competitive, comparable to other high-growth unicorns like Stripe and Databricks. The interview process includes a DSA-heavy HackerRank OA rated medium-to-hard, followed by one to two live technical interviews. No acceptance rate is published, but with 150-plus intern spots and the company's $16.8 billion valuation attracting top talent, selectivity is high.
Does Rippling hire international students as interns?
Yes. Reddit threads confirm international students have received both internship and full-time offers from Rippling. F-1 visa holders typically use CPT authorization for internships. No Rippling-specific visa sponsorship policy page has been published for interns, but as an HR and visa management platform, the company is well-versed in immigration processes.
What is the Rippling intern interview process?
The process has two to three stages. First, an online assessment on HackerRank with multiple-choice questions and two to three coding problems. Then one to two live technical interviews, 60 minutes each, covering algorithms and data structures. Full-stack roles add a Web Fundamentals round testing JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Expect LeetCode medium-to-hard difficulty, with graph traversal and dynamic programming as common topics.
Do Rippling interns get return offers?
Rippling claims one of the highest intern-to-full-time conversion rates in the industry. All three featured intern testimonials on the official blog converted to full-time Software Engineers, with one already promoted to Software Engineer II. The program is explicitly described as a direct funnel to full-time roles, not a trial period.
Where are Rippling internships located?
Rippling offers internships in San Francisco (HQ), New York City, Seattle, and Bangalore, India. The work model is hybrid: three days in office, two days remote. In-office attendance is described as an essential function of the role in the job posting. Fully remote internships are not available.
When should I apply for a Rippling Summer 2027 internship?
Now. Summer 2027 applications opened on September 21, 2026, with Full Stack, Backend, and Machine Learning Software Engineer and Data Science intern roles live on the Rippling ATS and no posted closing date. Offers roll through February 2027. Rippling recruits on a rolling basis and sends HackerRank assessments within days of application, so apply early and be OA-ready before you submit.
What do Rippling interns actually work on?
Interns ship real, production code from day one. Past projects include building the 1:1s product for Performance Management, leading self-serve flight upgrades (a customer-requested feature), and building semantic search for the Help Center with Google Drive integration. All of these features are still in production and used by Rippling's 20,000-plus business customers today.
Rippling's 150-plus intern seats fill on a rolling basis, and the HackerRank OA is the first gate. Spend the runway building proof: a remote Externship turns 'interested in Rippling' into a finished project with production-quality Python code to point at when applications open.
About the Author
Bifei Wang has spent 17 years focused on human flow and the growth of young professionals, spanning international education, career training and coaching, and recruitment process outsourcing. Over 7 years at Extern, he has had one-on-one sessions with thousands of students exploring careers in consulting, finance, tech, marketing, and data, giving him a firsthand view of how the job market has shifted for early-career professionals and what it actually takes to break in.


