NYC Startup Internships 2026: The Complete Guide + 100 Open Roles at Venture-Backed Startups

If you want to intern at a venture-backed startup in New York City, this is the only guide you need. Below you'll find 100 internship openings at NYC-based, venture-backed startups, plus a no-fluff playbook on how to actually land one — including the events to attend, the cold-outreach scripts that work, and the hustle strategy that beats a polished résumé every time.

New York is now the second-largest startup ecosystem on earth. From 2011 to 2023, venture firms poured nearly $210 billion into NYC startups — roughly equal to London, Singapore, and Hong Kong combined over the same period. That capital built thousands of fast-growing companies in fintech, AI, healthtech, dev tools, and B2B SaaS, and every one of them needs talent. Interns included.

This guide is built for students and early-career builders who don't have a FAANG logo on their résumé and don't want one. You want to ship real product, work next to founders, and come out the other side with a network and a story. Let's get you there.

Quick links: Browse live, curated NYC roles at startupjobs.nyc. For the people and events behind the NYC startup scene, subscribe to the NYC B2B newsletter.

1. Why a startup internship beats Big Tech (for the right person)

A summer at a 30-person Series A startup and a summer at a 100,000-person tech giant are different jobs that happen to share a title. Here's the honest trade-off.

At a startup you get:

• Real ownership. Your code or your campaign ships to actual customers within weeks, not after three layers of review. At a 50-person company there's nowhere for your work to hide, which is exactly why it matters.
• Founder access. You'll sit near — sometimes next to — the people who raised the money and make the decisions. That proximity is the single most valuable thing an internship can give an early-career person.
• Breadth. Startups don't have the headcount to keep you in a lane. You'll touch product, talk to users, maybe write a blog post and fix a bug in the same week.
• A return offer that means something. Startups hire interns because they genuinely need the help and want to convert the good ones. Your conversion odds are often higher than at a megacorp running a structured program with a fixed funnel.

What you give up:

• Big-name brand recognition on the résumé (though "early employee at a company that later raised a Series C" ages extremely well).
• Polished mentorship infrastructure. At a startup, mentorship is something you have to actively pull, not something pushed to you.
• Top-of-market cash. You'll typically make 20–30% less in pure salary than a FAANG intern — more on numbers below.

If you're the kind of person who'd rather build than be onboarded, the choice makes itself.

2. What NYC startup internships actually pay

Compensation varies widely by role and company stage. Here's what's typical for 2026 in NYC:

A few realities worth internalizing:

• Most NYC startups do not provide housing. Unlike West Coast giants, you should budget for rent. Some offer a stipend; many don't.
• Legitimate startups pay their interns. If a company offers "equity in lieu of pay," walk away. They're either too broke to hire or willing to exploit you. Equity on top of a real wage is fine and sometimes great.
• The experience premium is real. You're trading cash for ownership and access. Over a five-year horizon, that trade frequently wins.

3. How to read a startup's funding stage before you apply

The "YC batch code" and funding stage tell you almost everything about what your internship will feel like. Quick decoder:

• Pre-seed / Seed (2–15 people): Maximum chaos, maximum ownership. You may be the only intern and one of only a few engineers. Incredible if you're high-agency; brutal if you need structure.
• Series A (15–60 people): The sweet spot for most interns. Enough adults in the room to mentor you, still small enough that you matter. Most of the roles in this guide live here.
• Series B–C (60–200 people): Real processes exist. You'll have a manager and a defined project. Less "startup feel," more reliable mentorship.
• Late-stage / pre-IPO (200+): Basically a small public company. Great experience and pay, but if you wanted the scrappy startup energy, it's mostly gone.

A YC code like W25 means Winter 2025 batch (very early). S18 means Summer 2018 (more mature). When you see these next to a company name below, you'll know roughly what you're walking into.

4. The 100: open NYC venture-backed startup internships

Below are 100 internship openings (and immediately adjacent early-career roles) at NYC-based, venture-backed startups. These are compiled from the Y Combinator Work at a Startup board, active company career pages, and curated NYC job boards, then filtered for New York presence and venture backing. Startup hiring moves fast — always confirm a role is still open on the company's own careers page before investing time in an application.

For continuously updated, click-to-apply versions of roles like these, use startupjobs.nyc — it's curated specifically for engineering, product, design, and growth roles at New York startups.

Don't spray applications. Pick 10–15 companies whose product you'd genuinely use, learn them cold, and apply with a tailored note. Quality crushes quantity at startups.

Fintech & financial infrastructure

• Pluto (W25) — Regulated derivatives exchange. Early-career / new-grad engineering & markets roles, NYC.
• Method Financial (S19) — Financial connectivity API for consumer liabilities. Product and engineering, NYC.
• Titan (S18) — Consumer wealth manager. Product roles, NYC.
• Aqua (S21) — AI-native alternative investment platform. Product & engineering, NYC.
• Confido (S21) — AI financial automation for CPG brands. Engineering & ops, NYC.
• Chariot (S22) — Payment network connecting nonprofits to DAFs. Product, NYC.
• Concourse (W23) — AI agents for corporate finance teams. Forward-deployed engineering & PM, NYC.
• Hadrius (W23) — Automating securities compliance. Engineering & operations interns, NYC.
• SmartAsset — Consumer financial information & advisor marketplace. Engineering & data, NYC.
• Double (S21) — Software for bookkeepers. Product & engineering, NYC.
• Brevan Howard — VC arm summer internship (deep-tech investing). Quantitative/engineering, NYC.
• Coast — B2B card payments for fleets. Content, growth & engineering, NYC.
• Maywood — Finance-compliant proactive AI for dealmakers. Founding-team engineering, NYC.
• Autonomous — AI financial advisor at 0% advisory fees. Engineering, NYC.
• Keye — AI for private equity diligence. Engineering, NYC.

Artificial intelligence & machine learning

• Scale AI (S16) — Data infrastructure for AI. Product & engineering internships, NYC + SF.
• Artisan (W24) — AI "employees" starting with an AI BDR. Product & engineering, NYC + SF.
• Model ML (W24) — AI workspace for financial services. Product & growth, NYC.
• Stilta (W26) — Agentic AI for intellectual property. Founding-team & engineering, NYC.
• AssemblyAI — Speech-to-text and speech understanding models. ML & backend engineering, NYC presence.
• Shaped (W22) — Real-time retrieval engine for search, feeds, and agents. Software engineering, NYC.
• Terranox AI — AI/ML engineering summer interns.
• Trata — Research scientist interns. NYC + SF.
• Posh — Multi-agent AI systems for finance. Backend engineering, NYC.
• Superhuman — AI email. Design & growth, NYC presence.
• Gesture — AI operations & engineering. Full-stack & AI engineering interns, NYC.
• Abundant — Research-focused software engineering interns.
• Dedalus Labs — Forward-deployed engineering interns.
• DimeHealth AI — Forward-deployed engineering interns, NYC.
• Homebase — AI-native forward-deployed engineering interns, NYC + Houston + SF.

Healthtech & biotech

• Tennr (W23) — Fast, transparent patient experiences. Engineering & ops, NYC.
• Candid Health (W20) — Revenue-cycle automation platform. Product & engineering, NYC + SF + Denver.
• Craniometrix (W22) — AI to help dementia patients age at home. Engineering & ops, NYC.
• Bunkerhill Health (W19) — System of action for health systems. Forward-deployed product, NYC + SF.
• Stepful (S21) — Online training for healthcare jobs. Engineering, product & ops, NYC.
• PathAI — ML for pathology. ML interns (AI product & ML core), NYC + Boston (remote-friendly).
• SimCare (S24) — AI healthcare training. Engineering, NYC.
• Pasito (S22) — AI agents for insurance and benefits. Product & partnerships, NYC.
• Axle (S22) — AI-native clearinghouse for insurance. Customer solutions & technical account roles, NYC.
• Nutrinity — Smart nutrition systems (demoing at NY Tech Week). Engineering & product, NYC.

B2B SaaS & enterprise software

• RADAR (W13) — In-store retail experience technology. Product management & engineering, NYC.
• Heron Data (S20) — Automating document-heavy financial workflows. Product & engineering, NYC.
• Draftwise (S20) — Contract & negotiation AI for lawyers. Product specialist & engineering, NYC.
• Prelim (S17) — Software for banks to open accounts. Implementations & engineering, NYC.
• Arketa (S20) — Software for fitness & wellness businesses. Operations & engineering, NYC.
• BlueCargo (S18) — Automated complex freight transactions. Product & engineering, NYC + LA.
• Structured AI (F25) — AI workforce for construction engineering. Founding design/engineering, NYC.
• Stardex (S21) — AI-native ATS + CRM for executive search. Customer success & engineering, NYC.
• Interfere — Auto-detect, triage, and fix software bugs. Engineering, NYC.
• Ryvn — Devtools & infra for any-cloud / on-prem deploys. Engineering, NYC.

Consumer, marketplaces & commerce

• Rove (W24) — Travel rewards. Product lead & engineering, NYC.
• BoldVoice (S21) — Speech & accent coaching app. Product & engineering, NYC.
• Eight Sleep (S15) — Sleep fitness company. Product, hardware & engineering, NYC.
• CrowdVolt (S24) — Marketplace for live-event tickets (raves & EDM). Engineering interns across the stack, NYC.
• Dorsia — Restaurant reservations & experiences. Marketing intern, NYC.
• Goldbelly — Marketplace for iconic regional foods. Engineering & ops, NYC.
• Squire — Booking & payments for barbershops. Engineering & product, NYC.
• Agentio — Creator-campaign platform (Uber, DoorDash, Bombas). Creator partnerships intern, NYC.
• Aura — iOS social app for real-life connections. Engineering & marketing, NYC.
• Silana — Consumer startup. Engineering & ops, NYC.

Dev tools, infra & security

• SubImage (YC) — Graph-theory cloud security. Full-stack engineering intern, remote/SF with NYC-friendly team.
• Revise Robotics (W25) — Automating refurbishment of consumer electronics. Engineering & BD interns (Summer/Fall), NYC.
• Flux Cap. (P26) — Founding engineering. NYC.
• F2 — Collaborative dealmaking software. Engineering, NYC.
• Etched — Transformer-specialized inference chips. Infrastructure, firmware & supercomputing interns (US citizenship required for some), San Jose with East-Coast recruiting.

Plus 35 more open roles to track this cycle

The following NYC-based or NYC-hiring venture-backed companies regularly post engineering, product, data, design, and growth internships through the YC Work at a Startup board and their own careers pages. Track them and apply the moment a req opens:

• Ramp — Corporate cards & spend management.
• MongoDB — Developer data platform.
• Coinbase — Crypto exchange (NYC engineering presence).
• Datadog — Observability platform, NYC HQ.
• Justworks — HR & payroll, NYC HQ.
• Better — Digital mortgage, NYC.
• Cockroach Labs — Distributed SQL database, NYC HQ.
• DigitalOcean — Cloud for developers, NYC HQ.
• Yotpo — eCommerce marketing platform, NYC.
• Via — Transit technology, NYC HQ.
• Bombas — Consumer apparel & commerce, NYC.
• Cedar — Healthcare billing & payments, NYC.
• Alloy — Identity decisioning for fintech, NYC.
• Unit — Banking-as-a-service, NYC.
• Pinwheel — Payroll connectivity API, NYC.
• Petal — Consumer credit, NYC.
• Current — Consumer fintech, NYC.
• Fractal — AI / analytics, NYC presence.
• Standard Metrics — Investor reporting, NYC.
• Ondo Finance — Tokenized real-world assets, NYC.
• Runway — Generative AI for video, NYC.
• Hugging Face — Open-source ML (NYC team members).
• Jasper — AI content (NYC presence).
• Attentive — SMS marketing, NYC HQ.
• Movable Ink — Personalized content, NYC HQ.
• Lemonade — AI insurance, NYC HQ.
• Vestwell — Retirement infrastructure, NYC.
• Capitolis — Capital markets technology, NYC.
• Trade Republic / NYC fintechs — markets & infra roles.
• Simon Data — Customer data platform, NYC.
• Dataminr — Real-time AI for risk detection, NYC HQ.
• Transfix — Freight marketplace, NYC.
• Olo — Restaurant SaaS, NYC HQ.
• Squarespace — Website & commerce platform, NYC HQ.
• Peloton — Connected fitness, NYC HQ (engineering & data interns).

Listings change weekly. Treat this as a starting map, not a final answer. The live, click-to-apply versions live at startupjobs.nyc, and the founders behind many of these companies show up in the NYC B2B newsletter and at the events below.

5. The hustle strategy: how to land one without a brand-name résumé

Most internship advice is written by people who already interned at Google. That advice is useless if you're at a non-target school or have no big logo to lean on. Here's how to win anyway.

Build one impressive thing, not five mediocre ones

Startups care about one question: can you ship? One fully-functional project with real users beats five half-finished tutorial clones every single time. Put it on GitHub, deploy a live demo, and write a short post explaining the hard parts. A founder who can click a working link will read your résumé second.

Use the product before you apply

The highest-converting startup applicants are already users. Sign up. Find a bug. Suggest a feature. Then open your cover note with "I've been using [product] for three weeks and noticed X — here's how I'd fix it." You've just done the first day of the job for free.

Apply early and apply narrow

At startups, roles fill the moment a good candidate appears — there's no rigid hiring season holding a slot for you. Penultimate-year, sophomore, even motivated first-years get hired when they're early and specific. Pick a short list, go deep, and be first.

Optimize for the founder's actual problem

A startup hires an intern to make a specific pain go away. Read the job post for the pain, not the requirements. Then in your application, name the pain and show you can take it off their plate.

6. Events: where NYC founders actually hang out

Cold applications are the slow lane. The fast lane is meeting founders in person, because a warm "I met this person and they were sharp" beats a thousand inbound résumés. NYC runs one of the densest tech-event calendars on the planet — use it.

The events worth your time:

• NY Tech Week (June 1–7, 2026) — Presented by a16z, this is the marquee week of the NYC calendar: hundreds of host-run events, panels, and meetups across the city. There's a dedicated students track — apply to the waitlist and hosts follow up directly. This is the single highest-leverage week of the year for meeting founders who hire.
• NY Tech Meetup — One of the world's largest tech meetups (60,000+ members since 2004). Monthly demo night where 6–8 NYC companies show live product, then everyone networks. Free or near-free, broad crowd of founders, engineers, and investors.
• Startup Grind NYC — Regular pitch and demo nights with founder fireside chats.
• NYC B2B AI Founders & Investors Meetup — The flagship curated event for B2B SaaS founders building with AI. Smaller, higher signal, and full of exactly the people who run the companies in the list above. The full curated calendar lives at the NYC B2B events page.
• VC-hosted happy hours — Lerer Hippeau, USV, FirstMark, Bessemer, and Brooklyn Bridge Ventures all run regular NYC programming. Meet a VC's portfolio founders here, then ask them for the intro.
• TechDay NYC — Massive startup expo; great for volume conversations and discovering companies you'd never have found on a job board.

How to actually work a room (without being weird):

• Have a 10-second answer to "what do you do?" — "I'm a CS junior who builds [thing]; here's a demo on my phone." Lead with the build, not the title.
• Talk to founders of companies you've actually used. Specificity is magnetic. "I use your product and noticed X" opens every door.
• Don't ask for a job. Ask for a conversation, an opinion, or feedback on your project. Jobs follow relationships, not the reverse.
• Follow up within 24 hours. A short, specific note ("great talking about your onboarding flow — here's the prototype I mentioned") is what converts a handshake into an interview.
• Volunteer at the event. Helping run a meetup puts you next to the organizers, who know every founder in the room.

Want the events delivered to you instead of hunting for them? The NYC B2B newsletter tracks the city's startup and B2B events every week. Subscribe free at nycb2b.beehiiv.com.

7. Cold outreach that gets replies (with scripts)

When you can't get a warm intro, a great cold email still works — most students just send bad ones. The formula: short, specific, shows you did the work, asks for something small.

Cold email to a founder (engineering intern)

Subject: Bug in [product] + a fix

Hi [Name] — I'm a [year] [major] student in NYC and I've been using [product] for the last few weeks. I noticed [specific bug or rough edge], so I built a quick prototype of how I'd fix it: [link].

I'd love to do this kind of work full-time this summer. Here's my best project ([link]) and GitHub ([link]). Are you taking on engineering interns? Even 15 minutes to hear how you think about [specific technical area] would mean a lot.

Thanks, [Name]

LinkedIn / DM to an early employee (any role)

Hi [Name] — I saw you work on [team] at [company]. I'm a student in NYC trying to break into early-stage startups and I really admire what [company] is building (I [specific thing you noticed/used]). Would you be open to a quick 15-min chat about how you got in and whether the team takes interns? Happy to work around your schedule.

Why these work: they prove you've used the product, they show your work instead of describing it, and they ask for a tiny commitment (15 minutes) instead of a job. Send 10 of these to companies you genuinely care about and you'll get replies.

8. Red flags to avoid

Not every startup internship is worth taking. Walk away if you see:

• No full-time engineers (or operators) to mentor you. If a company has fewer than ~3 full-timers in your function and is hiring an intern, you'll likely spend the summer struggling alone. Ask directly: "Who will I work with day-to-day, and how much time do they have for me?"
• "Equity in lieu of pay." Legitimate startups pay interns. Equity instead of a real wage is a red flag.
• Vague role, vague answers. If they can't describe what you'll own by week two, they haven't thought about why they need you.
• No customers and no funding clarity. Pre-revenue is fine; can't-explain-the-runway is not.
• High turnover / bad reviews. A quick Glassdoor and LinkedIn check ("how long do people stay?") saves you a wasted summer.

9. Your 30-day action plan

Week 1 — Build your ammo. Polish one project with a live demo and a clean README. Rewrite your résumé to lead with what you've shipped, not what you've taken. Set up a clean GitHub and LinkedIn.

Week 2 — Build your list. Pick 15 companies from the list above whose products you'd actually use. For each, find the founder and one early employee on LinkedIn. Sign up for their product. Note one thing you'd improve.

Week 3 — Reach out. Send 10 tailored cold emails/DMs using the scripts above. Apply to the live roles on startupjobs.nyc. Register for NY Tech Meetup and any NY Tech Week student-track events.

Week 4 — Show up in person. Attend at least two events. Talk to three founders at each. Follow up within 24 hours. Subscribe to the NYC B2B newsletter so the next month of events comes to you.

Run this loop and you will be ahead of 95% of applicants — most of whom are still tweaking their résumé and waiting for "the right posting."

10. Frequently asked questions

When should I apply for a summer 2026 NYC startup internship?
Earlier than you think. The most competitive roles open in late fall and fill through winter. But because startups hire opportunistically, strong candidates get pulled in year-round — so even a spring application can land if you're specific and impressive. If summer is already full, pivot to fall internships, which open on a rolling basis.

Do NYC startups sponsor international students?
Some do, many don't. On job boards you'll see "US citizen/visa only" vs. "Will sponsor" vs. "US citizenship/visa not required." Filter for sponsorship-friendly companies early so you don't waste effort — several startups in this guide explicitly sponsor.

Do I need to be a computer science major?
No. Startups hire interns in product, design, growth, operations, data, and partnerships. What they need is someone who can take a problem off the founder's plate. The build-something-real principle applies to every function — a marketing intern with a portfolio of campaigns that drove real signups is as compelling as an engineer with shipped code.

What's the difference between a startup job board and a generic one?
Generic boards bury startup roles under thousands of corporate listings. Curated boards like startupjobs.nyc filter specifically for engineering, product, design, and growth roles at venture-backed New York startups — which is exactly what you want when your goal is startup experience, not just a job.

Is it worth attending events if I'm "just a student"?
Yes — arguably more so. Founders remember the sharp student who used their product and had a working demo on their phone. That memory converts to interviews far more reliably than a cold application. The events in section 6 are where those memories get made.

The bottom line

NYC's venture-backed startup ecosystem is enormous, hungry for talent, and unusually open to ambitious people without brand-name résumés — if you do the work to stand out. Build one real thing. Pick companies you'd genuinely use. Apply early and narrow. Then get off your laptop and into the rooms where founders actually are.

The 100 companies above are your map. The hustle is on you.

• Browse live, curated NYC startup roles → startupjobs.nyc
• Get NYC startup events & founder intros in your inbox → nycb2b.beehiiv.com
• The full NYC startup & B2B events calendar → nycb2b.org/blog

Listings are compiled from public job boards and company career pages and change frequently — always confirm a role on the company's own site before applying. Last updated: May 2026.