We view internships as a vital pipeline for talent and a source of new energy and ideas. The number of our intern goal, a nod to our 1.1.1.1 public DNS resolver, is intentional. It represents our deep technical roots and our focus on building foundational infrastructure for the Internet. Now, we stand at the cusp of a new technological revolution: the age of AI.

To win in this new era, we can’t just rely on established methods. We need new ways of thinking, unconstrained by the "way things have always been done." That’s why this significantly increased class of interns will have a special focus: to ramp up the creative and widespread application of AI with a fresh approach.

We want this group to challenge our assumptions. They will be tasked with looking at our customers’ needs, our products and features, our network, and our operations to find novel ways to utilize AI. How can AI make our network even smarter? How can it help our customers be more secure and efficient? How can it transform our own business processes? We believe that by empowering a large, diverse cohort of bright minds who have grown up as digital and now AI natives, we will unlock innovations we haven’t even imagined yet.

Like you, we have seen numerous reports that more and more firms are capping their total headcount in favor of leaning on more AI tools, leading to downsizing their intern and new-graduate hiring. This is resulting in increased sidelining of new college graduates. But we think this misreads the moment completely, so we’re heading in the opposite direction. 

While we are excited about what AI tools can help do, we have a different philosophy about their role. AI tools make great team members even better, and allow firms to set more ambitious goals. They are not replacements for new hires — but ways to multiply how new hires can contribute to a team.

The next phase of Cloudflare’s success will be driven by considerable change in almost everything we do. And although we have an amazing team, we are humble enough to realize that we don’t possess everything we need to envision and implement that radical change. We need the innovation and fresh approach of a talented new generation of leaders. And we can’t press “pause” on bringing aboard that talent. 

This isn’t the first time we’ve made a counter-cultural commitment to interns. Back in the 2020, as the world faced unprecedented uncertainty, many companies made the difficult decision to scale back or cancel their internship programs. We went in the opposite direction. Believing that investing in talent was more critical than ever, we doubled the size of our intern class. We knew that these students represented the future, and abandoning them was not an option. That decision reinforced our culture of long-term thinking and our responsibility to foster emerging talent, especially during the toughest of times. And we’ve benefitted from it — some of our most promising young employees emerged from this batch.

Interns at Cloudflare do real, meaningful work — they ship. They join active teams, and are expected to contribute to the problems that we solve everyday. Our interns don’t merely get a feel for the place and fetch coffee. This isn’t a “test drive.” We want every member of our intern program to take ownership of and conclude their time being able to point to a concrete deliverable that solved a real customer or internal problem at Cloudflare. 

From day one, interns are embedded in teams across the company — from engineering and product to marketing, legal, and finance. They work alongside seasoned experts on critical projects, contributing code that ships to millions, launching marketing campaigns, and helping to shape the policies that govern the Internet. Our goal is not just to provide an internship experience; it's to provide the foundation for a career. We are committed to training the people who will one day lead our company, our industry, and the future of the Internet.

The challenges we address will vary by intern and by team. You can review examples of intern projects from last year in this post here and real, dedicated, announcements from interns who launched new technologies here and here. Some of our interns operate as if they were just one more engineer or staff member on an existing team, helping contribute to its mission. Others are tasked with more exploratory projects where we ask them to go research and prototype new ideas.

Aside from impactful project work, our internship program offers a deep dive into our culture, while providing interns with practical experience and leadership skills. They'll build a valuable professional network, from engaging in social events and coffee chats to gaining direct access to executives through exclusive Q&A sessions. Every intern is paired with a dedicated mentor, and they'll get the chance to present their final work to the entire company. By the end of the program, interns will not only have enhanced their skills but also built lasting relationships to benefit their future careers.

We are looking for talented, curious, empathetic, and hard working team members who are inspired by our mission to help build a better Internet. Come with the attitude to learn, and we will handle the rest. We do not expect interns to be immediate experts in the fields they are joining. The Internet is full of enough jokes about companies posting a job for an internship and asking for ten years of work experience.

We do try to match opportunities with the applicant’s study areas and relevant skills. We want to equip our interns for success and prefer, for example, finding software engineering opportunities for computer science students or accounting opportunities for finance majors. Each internship role posted will specify any specific preferences we have for areas of study. We recognize that many students have robust portfolios, GitHub projects, or open-source contributions. We'll optimize our matching process to connect you with a relevant team where you can immediately apply your skills and elevate your work.

Thousands of candidates apply for our internships each year. We expect this expansion to increase that level of interest significantly. To help identify the kinds of builders we want to recruit, we are going to fast track engineering and other candidates who complete an assignment to build a type of AI-powered application on Cloudflare (more details on that below).

As part of this program, we will only be hiring interns who can be present multiple days each week in one of our hub offices (generally 3-4 days depending on the team). Cloudflare has adopted a hybrid approach to work centered in “hub” locations around the world. The various hybrid approaches adopted by different teams are based on experimentation and their unique functions. For interns, we think it is important for new and early career team members here for a brief tenure to connect with each other as well as more senior leaders in our organization. We believe that mentorship and coaching is best done in person. 

We expect to post internship opportunities in the following Cloudflare office locations:

• Austin, USA

• New York City, USA

• San Francisco, USA

• Bengaluru, India

• Lisbon, Portugal

• London, UK

Our internships generally last for 12 weeks. While we plan to prioritize summer internships, we expect to hire significant numbers of interns in the spring and fall of 2026 as well.

Summer internships give students an opportunity to get experience without interrupting a school semester. The seasonal approach also makes it possible for us to create cohorts of interns who support each other on projects. That said, we know that education has changed a bit since we were in school. An increasing number of universities have developed programs for students to work with companies as part of a normal school semester, and others are more flexible in their approach to letting students choose to reduce hours or take a semester away from classwork to support an internship. 

We pay our interns. This means a competitive rate that is generally akin to the prorated salary of an entry-level position. And if you have to relocate temporarily to a city where we have an office, we will give you a stipend to support your travel and housing needs. Since we expect interns at Cloudflare to contribute immediately to real problem solving, it’s only fair to pay them accordingly. 

And we believe it's incredibly important to pay interns. Many long-term employment opportunities arise through internship programs, so it's unfair to limit those programs to those who can afford to relocate and work full time for little or no pay. 

1. Keep an eye on our career site, and specifically our internship opportunities listed here. We will start posting more internship opportunities for 2026 starting on October 15th. 

2. The intern opportunities page will link to our internship application portal that will streamline the application process. We plan to review applications in batches until all positions are filled. Our interview process will take 3-4 weeks.

3. Want a leg up? For the Software Engineering internship, we plan to fast track review of candidates who complete an assignment to build a type of AI-powered application on Cloudflare. Submit directly with your application.

We look forward to hearing from you.

This year, Cloudflare welcomed a class of approximately 40 interns, hailing from five different countries for an unforgettable summer. As we joined both remotely and in-person across Cloudflare’s global offices, our experiences spanned a variety of roles from engineering, product management to internal auditing and marketing. Through invaluable mentorship, continuous learning, and the chance to make a real-world impact, our summer was truly enriched at every step. Join us, Anni and Emilie, as we provide an insider's perspective on a summer at Cloudflare, sharing snippets and quotes from our intern cohort.

You might have noticed that we have a new name for the interns: the Intern-ets! Our fresh intern nickname was born from a brainstorm between us and our recruiter, Judy. While “Cloudies”, “Cloudterns”, and “Flaries” made the shortlist, a company-wide vote crowned "Intern-ets" as the favorite. And just like that, we've made Cloudflare history!

We're all incredibly proud to have gotten the opportunity to tackle interesting and highly impactful projects throughout the duration of our internships. To give you a glimpse of our summer, here are a few that showcase the breadth and depth of our experiences.

Mia M., Product Manager intern, worked on the Cloudflare Secrets Store, which is a new product that will allow Cloudflare customers to store, encrypt, and deploy sensitive data across the product suite. She focused on creating requirements for the core platform and tackling the first milestone, bringing secrets and environment variables from the per-Worker level to the account level in the Workers platform.

Pierre, Research intern, focused on integrating differential privacy—a layer of protection with formal privacy guarantees—into distributed aggregation protocols. This privacy layer is imperative for user trust and data security as these protocols are commonly used for collecting sensitive information, such as browser telemetry or health data.

Johnny, Software Engineer intern, worked on a new feature for API Shield called Object-Level Access Policies as a first step in a solution to combat Broken Object-Level Authorization, which has been ranked as the #1 API Security flaw by OWASP. This feature will enable customers to specify explicit allowlists and blocklists for API traffic per object.

Olivia, Project Manager intern, led the Dissatisfied (DSAT) Customer Outreach Project and JIRA Automations for the Customer Support team. The DSAT project involves reaching out to Premium customers who express dissatisfaction with the goal of providing personalized contact to ensure they feel valued. The JIRA Automation project aims to create zero-touch tickets, removing Customer Support as the middle man.

Also don’t forget to check out the amazing intern projects that got featured in a blog post!

Emilie, Software Engineering intern introduced a debugging feature for Cloudflare Queues.

Joaquin, Software Engineer intern added a new Workers Database integration.

Austin, Software Engineer intern created scheduled deletion for Cloudflare Stream.

Beyond our projects, we had tons of fun getting to meet other Cloudflarians and experience the vibrant Cloudflare culture. Let's dive into some of the standout moments that made our internships truly special!

This summer, the interns dotted the globe, working from cozy home setups to bustling offices in cities. Regardless of where we worked, we had a blast. Here's what some fellow interns have to say about their work experiences:

Austin office: Jada loved her colleagues at the Austin office as they were “warm and open to exploring the city, [...], and hanging out outside of work”. Anni and Maximo loved attending the Austin-based team summit where they attended strategy sessions and met the team in-person.

San Francisco office: Emmanuel F. enjoyed getting to interact with other engineers during SF Team Lunches. Matthew enjoyed working on the rooftop to a view of the city skyline. Jonathan appreciated the hybrid work model enjoyed by SF employees.

Remote work: Johnny liked the distributed and flexible work style that the company embraces. Daniël, also working remotely and found it amusing how “[s]everal people have noticed the Feynman Lectures on Physics on the shelf behind me in my home and have asked about it.”

Remote intern events: Emmanuel G., Aaron, and Feiyu enjoyed the intern calls that were held on GatherRound as “it was a fun, quick way to get to meet everyone.” Pradyumna particularly liked it when we played skribbl.io.

With so many exceptional minds at Cloudflare, every interaction became a chance for us to learn and grow. Here are some awe-inspiring individuals who have made our internships unforgettable:

Harshal, Systems Engineer: Aaron is grateful for his mentor Harshall. “I always left our conversations knowing more than I did coming into them”.

Revathy, Systems Engineer: Harshini is thankful to her mentor Revathy for “how she helps me to learn [...] the best way possible to do something and ultimately achieve my goals”.

Nevi, Product Manager: Anni admires her manager Nevi who is always thinking about the team and our customers and has invested in the personal growth and mentorship of interns.

Conner, Systems Engineer: Jonathan is grateful that he was always able to count on Conner for great engineering tips, guidance, and NeoVim wizardry.

Malgorzata, Data Scientist: Jada looks up to Malgorzata for being so welcoming, kind, and funny. She has a great attitude and besides being super knowledgeable, she is also willing to share her expertise and support others!

During our internships, we engaged in Executive fireside chats, diving deep with Cloudflare's top leaders. Each chat was insightful and surprising in a different way, and some of our favorite takeaways were…

John, CTO: Shaheen valued John’s humility in emphasizing daily learning from others at work, stating, “As I grow in my career, I intend to keep a similar attitude and try to learn from those around me by keeping myself grounded.”

Doug Kramer, General Counsel: Emilie valued Doug Kramer's advice on identifying a career "north star" to guide intentions while also recognizing "exit-ramps" or alternative paths that may offer unexpected fulfillment.

Matthew Prince, Co-founder and CEO: Yunfan loved hearing “the story about how Cloudflare developed from a start-up till today”.

Michelle Zatlyn, Co-founder and COO: Harsh learned from Michelle about “how they moved across the country, against everyone's advice, to start Cloudflare”, and Mia C. enjoyed learning that “Cloudflare started as a business school project”.

A bonding point for the Intern-ets was our love for snacks! In July, we gathered the Intern-ets together for a virtual snack break. The University team sent out a box featuring snacks from Indonesia, a country none of us had visited (or tried goodies from… yet!). Below you can see us holding up our favorite snacks from the box!

Meanwhile, the on-site interns couldn't get enough of the office snacks. Favorites? Pita chips, Lucky Charms, chocolate almonds, coconut chocolate bars and coconut water. Plus, the Austin and San Francisco offices even have a Sour Patch Kids dispenser! Snack on!

Every day at Cloudflare presented unexpected joys and challenges. Here's what the interns found most surprising:

High Impact: Simon, Emmanuel F. and Maximo were surprised to “[do] such visible and important work as an intern”. Austin agreed, noting “I was treated like any other member of the team [...] It felt like I was working on something important and not just a typical intern project!” Harshini added, “when [colleagues] hear what I am working on they go - ‘that is really cool, I can't wait to see that happen - we need it.’”

Support: Eames “was worried that it would feel like my achievements were the only thing that mattered. But my colleagues always showed concern for how I was feeling and how things were going, and I couldn't be more grateful for that.”

Industry vs Academia: Johnny mentioned “coming from academia, I was amazed by the amount of effort that has been, and is continuing to be, put into the products to really productionize what I have only before seen in research. It is another reminder of the scale in which we work!”

Here are some fun stats from our internship…

• Johnny drove 30 hours from New York to Colorado

• Maximo missed 0 days of going to the Austin office

• Anni drank 86 matcha lattes this summer

• Emilie participated in 38 Cloudfriends calls and coffee chats

• Simon has waited around one week cumulatively for builds to finish

At Cloudflare, our internships aren’t just about work—they're about growth, mentorship, and real impact. We've built more than projects; we've forged lasting relationships. It’s been an unforgettable summer of challenges, bonding, and authentic experiences. For more about our journey this summer, check out our Cloudflare TV segment with Michelle Zatlyn, Co-founder and COO.

Finally, we would love to give a huge thanks to our university recruiters Judy, Trang, and Dani for creating such an amazing internship experience for us this summer!

Sign up here to be notified of new grad and internship opportunities for 2024. Cloudflare is also hiring for full-time opportunities: check out open positions and apply today!

Earlier this month, we announced our plans to relaunch our intern hiring and double our intern class this summer to support more students who may have lost their internships due to COVID-19. You can find that story here. We’ve had interns joining us over the last few summers - students were able to find their way to us by applying to full-time roles and sometimes through Twitter. But, it wasn’t until last summer, in 2019, when we officially had our first official Summer Internship Program. And this year, we are doubling down.

We have found interns to be invaluable. Not only do they bring an electrifying new energy over the summer, but they also come with their curiosity to help solve problems, contribute to major projects, and bring refreshing perspectives to the company.

1. Ship projects: Our interns are matched with a team and work on real and meaningful projects. They are expected to ramp up, contribute like other members of the team and ship by the end of their internship.

2. Hire strong talent: The internship is the “ultimate interview” that allows us to better assess new grad talent. The 12 weeks they spend with us tell us how they work with the team, their curiosity, passion and interest in the company and mission, and overall ability to execute and ship.

3. Increase brand awareness: Some of the best interns and new grads we’ve hired come from referrals from past interns. Students go back to school and will share their summer experience with their peers and classmates, and it can catch like wildfire. This will make long term hiring much easier.

4. Help grow future talent: Companies of all sizes should hire interns to help grow a more diverse talent pool, otherwise the future talent would be shaped by companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and the like. The experience gained from working at a small or mid-sized startup versus a behemoth company is very different.

How do we make sure we’re prepared for interns? And what should companies and teams consider to ensure a great internship experience? It’s important for companies to be prepared to onboard interns so interns have a great and fruitful experience. These are general items to consider:

1. Committed manager and/or mentor: Interns need a lot of support especially in the beginning, and it’s essential to have a manager or mentor who is willing to commit 30+% of their time to train, teach, and guide the intern for the entire duration of the summer. I would even advise managers/mentors to plan their summer vacations accordingly and if they’re not there for a week or more, they should have a backup support plan.

2. Defined projects and goals: We ask managers to work with their interns to clearly  identify projects and goals they would be interested in working on either before the internship starts, or within the first 2 weeks. By the end of the internship, we want each intern to have learned a lot, be proud of the work they’ve accomplished and present their work to executives and the whole company.

3. Open environment and networking: Throughout the internship, we intentionally create opportunities to meet more people and allow a safe environment for them to ask questions and be curious. Interns connect with each other, employees across other teams, and executives through our Buddy Program, Executive Round Tables, and other social events and outings.

4. Visibility and exposure: Near the end of the internship, all interns are encouraged and given the opportunity to present their work to the whole company and share their project or experience on the company blog. Because they are an integral part of the team, many times they’ll join meetings with our leaders and executives.

The above are general goals and best practices for an internship during normal times. These are far from normal times. Like many companies, we were faced with the daunting question of what to do with our internship program when it was apparent that all or most of it would be virtual. We leaned into that challenge and developed a plan to build a virtual internship program that still embodies the principles we mentioned and ensures a robust internship experience.

The general mantra will be to over-communicate and make sure interns are included in all the team’s activities, communications, meetings, etc. Not only will it be important to include interns in this, it's even more important because these members of our team will crave it the most. They'll lack the historical context existing employees share, and also won't have the breadth of general work experience that their team has. This is where mentors and managers will have to find ways to go above and beyond. Here are some tips below.

Interns will need to onboard in a completely remote environment, which may be new to both the manager and the company. If possible, check in with the interns before their first day to start building that relationship - understand what their remote work environment is like, how’s their mental health during COVID-19, are they excited and prepared to start? Also, keep in mind that the first two weeks are critical to set expectations for goals and deliverables, to connect them with the right folks involved in their project, and allow them to ask all the questions and get comfortable with the team.

Logistically, this may involve a laptop being mailed to them, or other accommodations for remote work. Verify that the intern has been onboarded correctly with access to necessary tools. Make a checklist. Some ideas to start with:

1. Can they send/receive email on your company’s email address?

2. Do you have their phone number if all else fails? And vice-versa?

3. Do they have access to your team's wiki space? Jira? Chat rooms?

4. Can they join a Google Meet/Zoom meeting with you and the team? Including working camera and microphone?

5. Can they access Google Calendar and have they been invited to team meetings? Do they know the etiquette for meetings (to accept and decline) and how to set up meetings with others?

6. Have they completed the expected onboarding training provided by the company?

7. Do they have access to the role-specific tools they'll need to do their job? Source control, CI, Salesforce, Zendesk, etc. (make a checklist of these for your team!)

It's critical to establish a normal work cadence, and that can be particularly challenging if someone starts off fully remote. For some interns, this may be their first time working in a professional environment and may need more guidance. Some suggestions for getting that established:

1. Hold an explicit kickoff meeting between the intern and mentor in which they review the project/goals, and discuss how the team will work and interact (meeting frequency, chat room communication, etc).

2. If an intern is located in a different timezone, establish what would be normal working hours and how the team will update them if they miss certain meetings.

3. Ensure there's a proper introduction to the team. This could be a dedicated 1:1 for each member, or a block of the team's regular meeting to introduce the candidate to the team and vice-versa. Set up a social lunch or hour during the first week to have more casual conversations.

4. Schedule weekly 1:1s and checkpoint meetings for the duration of the internship.

5. Set up a very short-term goal that can be achieved quickly so the intern can get a sense for the end-to-end. Similar to how you might learn a new card game by "playing a few hands for fun" - the best way to learn is to dive right in.

6. Consider having the mentor do an end-of-day check-in with the intern every day for at least the first week or two.

7. Schedule at least one dedicated midpoint meeting to provide feedback. This is a time to evaluate how they’re progressing against their goals and deliverables and if they’re meeting their internship expectations. If they are, great. If not, it is essential at this point to inform them so they can improve.

A major part of a great internship also involves social activities and networking opportunities for interns to connect with different people. This becomes more difficult and requires ever more creativity to try to create those experiences. Here are some ideas:

1. Hold weekly virtual intern lunches and if there’s budget, offer a food delivery gift card. Have themed lunches.

2. Think about virtual social games, Netflix parties, and possibly other apps that can augment virtual networking experiences.

3. Set up social hours for smaller groups of interns to connect and rotate. Have interns meet with interns from their original office locations, from the same departments,

4. Set up an intern group chat and have a topic, joke, picture, meme of the day to the conversations alive.

5. Create a constant “water cooler” Google Meet/Zoom room so folks can sign on anytime and see who is on.

6. Host virtual conversations or round tables with executives and senior leaders.

7. Involve them in other company activities, especially Employee Resource Groups (ERGs).

8. Pair them with a buddy who is an employee from a different team or function. Also, pair them up with a peer intern buddy so they can share their experience.

9. Send all the swag love you can so they can deck out their house and wardrobe. Maybe not all at once, so they can get some surprises.

10. Find a way to highlight interns during regular all-hands meetings or other company events, so people are reminded they’re here.

11. Survey the students and get their ideas! Very likely - they have better ideas on how to socialize in this virtual world.

Interns in the past have proven to be invaluable and have made huge contributions to Cloudflare. So, we are excited that we are able to double the program to give more students meaningful work this summer. Despite these very odd and not-so-normal times, we are committed to providing them the best experience possible and making it memorable.

We hope that by sharing our approach we can help other companies make the pivot to remote internships more easily. If you’re interested in collaborating and sharing ideas, please contact internships@cloudflare.com.