Creating AEO's Engineering Internship Program

Problem

AEO's UI Engineering org needed a real pipeline of early-career talent, but the existing internship template was the usual one: side-quest tasks, light supervision, and limited insight into how engineering actually worked. It didn't attract the candidates we wanted, and the interns who did come through didn't get a clear picture of life as a UI Engineer.

Approach

I designed and ran the Engineering Internship Program end-to-end. HR handled recruiting; I owned the program's substance.

The 8-week structure was built around three principles:

1. Context before participation. Each week introduced interns to a different project team, with intros to key members ahead of any ceremonies — so when they joined standups or planning, they understood who and what they were watching.
2. Real codebase contributions. Interns reviewed the codebase, proposed their own projects, and ran them through the full lifecycle: pull requests, peer programming, code review, and a final demo to the engineering team. I gave constructive proposal feedback so refactoring and pivoting felt like part of the work, not failure.
3. Concrete success metrics. A successful PR fixing a real production bug. PR approval for the intern's proposed project. A completed demo. And — explicitly — the intern's own desire to return as a full-timer.

Outcome

• The post-internship survey captured strong interest in returning to AEO
• The program was adopted by HR as a model for internship programs in other departments
• Interns left with portfolio-worthy work, not busywork
• The org built a credible early-career talent pipeline

What this says about how I lead

Internship programs are often where companies talk about culture and then quietly fail to invest. The fix here wasn't a clever curriculum — it was treating interns like junior engineers, giving them work that mattered, and being explicit about what success looked like for both sides.