Software Engineering Internship Experience 2.C: Web Full Stack Development and R&D of Algorithms for Fighting Human Trafficking

Rolling Start and End Dates All Year; 100% Remote Participate-from-Anywhere Position; Full-time and Part-time Options; Unpaid Internship ​​for Training, Practical Experience through Project-based Learning, and Possible Academic Credit: check with your college about credit and visa requirements before applying.

Please apply for only 1 position at a time, even if you are interested in several, and apply now for all start-dates at any time of year. You do not need to supply your resume or transcript initially; we will ask you to follow up with these and other information via email, if we invite you to be interviewed.

About Us: Nonprofits need our help to provide disaster relief, prevent suicides, feed the hungry, educate children, rescue animals, protect our environment, and benefit the world. We create and sell technology to help nonprofits gain online visibility and automate marketing functions, namely our upcoming PromoterMotor.com software. It automates what we have done for years by hand: help non profits get and make maximal use of free advertising from Google. Also, we create ads for nonprofits in ways that actively counter misinformation by educating the public. Bashpole is a for-profit company that exclusively serves non-profits as its clients.

Emerging Growth Company: Bashpole Software has a start-up-like environment with fewer than 10 employees plus many bright interns; our growth in terms of clients and staff is accelerating, which makes this an exciting time to get involved. Check our Careers Page to see all open positions and testimonials from past interns from departments such as Marketing, Digital Media, Business, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Technical Writing, and Human Resources: bashpolesoftware.com/careers

Project-based Learning: This team will contribute to a large, existing code-base of software that gathers and processes tips from the public about possible human trafficking situations. Our software is designed to mediate text messages and images on behalf of partner non-profit organizations or use in collaboration with relevant law enforcement. This project requires advanced skills with Java, JavaScript, NoSQL, JSON, HTML, and CSS. It may also involve the use of Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP).

Training and Responsibilities May Include But Will Not Be Limited To:

  • Research and develop photo recognition software, an automated phone tip line, and a web platform
  • Develop algorithms to identify locations where human trafficking victims are found and assist authorities in tracking participants within those structures
  • Learn how to work in tandem with relevant authorities to make all algorithms scalable and efficient
  • Participate in a remote-work environment, learning how to manage a diverse workforce
  • Build a strong connections with other interns and staff people through networking meetings while remaining socially distanced
  • Attend regular meetings to prevent isolation and facilitate collaboration

Note: This is by no means an exhaustive list but it gives an indication of the many projects taking place. You might focus on some of these to the exclusion of others. Tasks and training will change according to business needs.

Relevant Future Careers: Senior Software Engineer, Full Stack Developer, Machine Learning Researcher, Software Consultant

Resume Accomplishments: After completing this internship, here are the top accomplishments that you may be able to add to your resume:

  • Participated in the full lifecycle development of a sophisticated web application which uses many libraries and APIs
  • Learned several management and quality assurance processes
  • Combined sophisticated machine learning algorithms with a complex software architecture
  • Participated in and expanded the training procedures that will benefit future interns

Learning Objectives:

  • Pair Programming and Communication: Connecting with both your coworkers and supervisor with a positive personality, analytical mindset, and sense of humor in order to accomplish tasks 
  • Creative Problem Solving: Searching for an original and previously unknown solution to a problem and generating innovative and up-to-date ideas while being able to train, learn, and apply the code
  • Reading and Writing Comprehension: Excellent oral and written communication skills in work related documents
  • Time Management, Organization and Coordination: Staying focused on different tasks, and using time, energy, strength, mental capacity, physical space, etc. effectively and efficiently in order to achieve the desired outcome
  • Service Orientation: Deepen knowledge of the nonprofit consulting sector
  • Telecommuting: Working remotely in both a team and individually

Technologies:

Required Prerequisites about which we will quiz your knowledge during an interview, that serve as the starting point for more advanced topics to be covered during an internship:

Preferred knowledge and additional items that you will be required to use during an internship:

Apply to One Position, Maximum: Do not apply for more than one internship position at a time. Apply to the one that interests you the most. Then, if you are invited for an interview, you may indicate interest in other positions at that time, and we can discuss which position would be best suited for you.

Minimum Education and Experience: Applicants need to be enrolled in a college or graduate program at the beginning of their internship. Previous internship experience is beneficial but not required. You must have completed some classes relevant to your internship prior to beginning and must show examples of what you know during your interview.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Why Us? Gain real, professional training with one or more internship experiences at Bashpole Software, Inc. Apply your creativity and drive for project-focused, hands-on learning experiences. You can participate in our training as an intern or a volunteer, using your time to make a difference. We are all linked, so help us help nonprofits help the world.

Why Participate Remotely? We are creating the workplace of the future. It is akin to what the CEO of the multi-billion dollar company Automattic calls Level 5. As a 100% remote company for many years, we have developed remote internship processes that prioritize and achieve freedom, socialization, organization, and personal wellness. See below about networking and meetings.

Who is more likely to succeed in this internship position? People with:

  • a genuine interest in the nonprofit consulting sector and who have taken several classes from their chosen academic field that are relevant to this position
  • proactive mindsets that like their voices to be heard
  • detailed note-taking habits
  • time management skills who are dependable 

What can we offer you? 

  1. Real, Hands-on Experience: Rather than the coffee-fetching of a typical internship or the text-book learning of a classroom setting, we provide interns with hands-on experience with real projects. Each intern will have a main project along the lines of the title of the internship position to which they were accepted plus several side projects, which together create a diverse set of learning experiences. Moreover, your training and participation in our research and development can directly help nonprofits around the world to connect with donors, volunteers, constituents, and more.
  2. Make a Difference: In volunteering here, you can help nonprofits help the world on a larger scale than by interning for any one nonprofit. Join us in the pursuit of truth, knowledge, and how best to help the world make itself a better place. This allows you to have a larger impact than if you were to volunteer with a single nonprofit or government organization alone. We are developing a first-of-its-kind system to help non-profits gain the publicity that is currently more desperately needed than ever.
  3. Teamwork and Mentorship: Bashpole Software, Inc. enables you to work in small teams of typically 3 to 5 interns. You’ll meet regularly with fellow interns on your team. You’ll also meet weekly as a team to gain direct supervision and mentorship from the company’s CEO, senior staff members, and/or more seasoned interns.
  4. Network with Peers, Mentors, and More: Bashpole creates networking opportunities by helping you to learn how to effectively communicate with executives. This will allow them to build lasting impressions and have direct interactions with staff members and fellow interns around the United States and the world. Interns often report connecting with more people in our remote internships than they do in physical classrooms of comparable size because of the ways we encourage and facilitate networking meetings.
  5. Company Culture: Bashpole believes it’s crucial for interns to feel comfortable speaking up for what they believe in. We value suggestions for improvements on all aspects of our company and voicing opinions about projects in team settings. Additionally, we seek interns with the ability to pursue the career growth that they want and the courage to request the kind of work that they want to do. Bashpole looks for intellectually honest individuals with a spirit of independence and interdependence.
  6. Workplace Readiness Training: Employers expect students to understand communication soft skills and corporate culture, however, colleges offer few opportunities for students to learn day-to-day workplace fundamentals for behavior. As a result of this, we’ve developed something unique: our Rules-of-Thumb (RoT’s) training process. The RoT’s’ are the otherwise unwritten rules of professional etiquette straight from hard-learned experiences of industry professionals. We’re developing a book and a training system for explicitly teaching this kind of advice to our employees, interns, and eventually to others which will be valuable for their future career.
  7. Portfolio: With approval from management, this internship also offers opportunities for you to add examples to your professional portfolio, which you can later use for future job applications.
  8. Academic Credit: If you want work-study or school-credit for the internship, we can almost always provide the kind of oversight your university would require. Some educational institutions require prior approval before the start of an internship. It is your responsibility to check with your institution to be sure you meet all requirements before you accept a position.

What is the expected time commitment? We offer both part and full-time internships. Full-time is required in the summer but available throughout the year. All of our internships have rolling start-dates, where you can start at whatever season of the year that’s most convenient for you. Generally, a full-time internship (40 hours a week, or whatever is the maximum your college allows) lasts for 3 to 4 months, and a part-time internship (12 to 20 hours a week, whatever is the maximum your college allows) lasts up to 6 months, which works out to approximately the same total time commitment either way. You are able to switch from full-time to part-time, or vice versa, as long as the duration adds up to a total of about 60 work days or 480 work hours.

What does a typical week look like?

  • There’s no typical day, since there will be flexible hours and new things to learn and do; instead, you will be asked to make a weekly routine with blocks of time to commit to the internship that fit with the times and way you personally work best. You can work from anywhere in the world that has a good Internet connection, as long as that is somewhere that is relatively quiet for scheduled meetings.
  • You will work either collaboratively in a team or independently on a project of your choice from a list that we will provide. You’ll have a main project and a handful of side projects, such that you’ll get a wide variety of applied training experiences.
  • In weekly team meetings, you will meet with and be supervised by Bashpole employees who have many years of relevant work experience. You’ll also have intern-only meetings for collaborating with your peers, reviewing each other’s work, and answering each others’ questions that will help you prepare for team meetings with your supervisors.
  • You can choose whether or not to attend office hours with Bashpole employees each week.
  • If you request it, you can sit in on meetings we have with nonprofit leaders that are our current or prospective customers.
  • Every other week, we will have an “All Hands and Rule of Thumb (RoT) Meeting” to offer our advice about corporate culture and communications soft skills: these are mostly from lessons that we learned the ‘hard way’ in the workplace, things that no one taught us in college classes but that most employers expect you to know.
  • You’ll choose hours to work by yourself by putting them on a calendar that you’ll share with your colleagues; the times of day and days of week will be flexible.

Can I join more than one team? Not simultaneously; you could only participate in one team at a time. However, we welcome and encourage sequential internships, meaning participating in one team at one time and then another team at another time.

When may I get started? First, if an applicant meets our preliminary qualifications, we send them a message with detailed instructions for setting up an interview that must be followed precisely, or else we will decline the interview. Generally, each applicant has at least one interview during which their aptitude and knowledge are evaluated. If this goes well, the applicant will be given a follow-up task to examine how much they understand about our company and their position. If Bashpole then makes you an internship offer, you may start either as soon as you like or later in the year when your schedule permits: we have an orientation/onboarding meeting almost every Thursday for new interns. In this meeting, we walk together through the first part of a “Personal Syllabus” spreadsheet that introduces you to how our company works and how to get started with your internship. Then, every week, you will continue taking training instructions from and logging your progress in your Personal Syllabus. In a weekly team meeting with your supervisor, you’ll show your syllabus log to your team via a screenshare, as well as show, get feedback on, and take notes for next steps with your project.

Who will my supervisor be? Each team will report directly to their Department Manager (that will be the title of your supervisor) every week. (See also “What does a typical week look like?”, above.) Your manager may be assisted by other employees and sometimes by interns who are more senior than you, so treat them as sources of authority. If you ever have concerns about your peers or supervisors, you can contact people that are organizationally adjacent to or above them, on up to the CEO. We prefer that everyone communicate early and often about their concerns… and their accomplishments!

How much will I work with employees compared to other interns? This varies from position to position and changes from the beginning to the end of a typical internship, however, generally: you will meet with a Bashpole employee for at least one, if not several hours a week. You will meet with fellow interns for at least a few hours a week, if not up to about half of the time per week that you spend on your internship. The rest of the time, you will spend working on your own on your projects and training. If you want to spend more (or less) time working directly with other people, just let your supervisor know, and they will sometimes be able to make adjustments. We will encourage you to collaborate with others as often as possible.

What are the challenges to expect? This internship is going to take hard work and sometimes will be an imperfect experiment in training. There may be occasional communication at odd hours due to time differences and urgent matters. There will be more intern-intern interaction than with employees, and you can expect a mix of training from supervisors and finding and developing training yourself. Tasks may be vague and unclear at times as some assignments will be new. However, we believe interns grow by dealing with such challenges and working through them: this is how the real world works. Our organization is run by real people — and while we are not perfect — our intentions are to work hard and be the best we can be. We look for interns that have the humility to admit the same about themselves.

What have previous interns said? Check testimonials of our previous interns on our Careers page: bashpolesoftware.com/careers

What are the schedule expectations for this internship?

  • Be generally available for meetings during business hours of US Eastern time – we have team and individual meetings every week via Google Meet and similar online conferencing software.
  • Aside from scheduled meetings, you will have your choice for daily start and stop times; you can create a routine that works for you, as long as you make your internship your top priority.
  • For internships taken concurrently with classes during the school year, participate part-time. For internships during summer break, participate full-time. Internships can be a mix of part and full time, optionally including time over fall/winter/spring breaks: just talk about your preferences with us.
  • Manage your personal schedule such that you fulfill the weekly internship time you agree to.
  • Internship begin and end dates are flexible according to your university’s calendar for classes.

There are no costs to participate in our internships of any sort, ever. Our internship is like a class that you get to take for free, and yet even though our internships provide substantial experiential learning, we recognize that sometimes personal financial situations are an obstacle for some people. If this is a concern for you, then check with your career services center and academic advisers about whether your college offers any form of support that helps students take unpaid internships. Some colleges have scholarships, grants, stipends, or options for gaining class credit; some do not; either way, there are never fees nor expenses of any kind related to our internships, and you should be wary of any company that would try to charge you for anything for an internship.

If I apply, what are the odds I’ll be accepted? Bashpole Software posts its internship positions to nearly 1,200 colleges across the USA and receives hundreds of applications for each position for each season of the year. We generally select between 1 and 5 people per position per season (Winter/Spring, Summer, or Fall/Winter). Although our interview style may seem friendly and conversational, there are a great many factors that we carefully consider before, during, and after each interview. If you are selected for an interview, it is not a guarantee that you will be given an offer. Upon selection for an interview, we will send you a message with everything you need to do to prepare for your interview, and you will be expected to follow all of the instructions completely. You should take some time to prepare for your interview.

Why is it an unpaid internship? Bashpole is a for-profit company that’s rebranding itself, which explains the start-up-like environment. Due to these circumstances, we currently don’t provide compensation. In lieu of payment, we provide interns with rich learning experiences such as receiving mentorship, the responsibility to create training, strong recommendation letters based on performance, and the opportunity to graduate to advanced management-based experiences. Bashpole Software, Inc. complies with all US Department of Labor Federal Internship Guidelines per https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm. This position also complies with NACE Criteria for internships per http://www.naceweb.org/about-us/advocacy/position-statements/position-statement-us-internships/#sthash.WbfvUjco.dpuf.

To Apply: You must be a student for the duration of your internship and must not have permanently graduated. Interns – whether interested in one or multiple internships – will require only a single, one-hour first interview. In some cases, a customized internship may be possible. If you meet these criteria, then 1) if you have access to Handshake, apply there. Or 2) if not, email careers@bashpole.com with your resume, unofficial transcript, a note that you do not have access to Handshake, a polite self-introduction message, and the full name of the position that interests you the most (copy/paste the name from the title of the page for that position). If you do not include all requested information, then you will not be offered an interview.