Software Engineer Intern (Summer 2027)

State Affairs•Washington, DC

11h•$9,000 - $10,000•Onsite

About The Position

State Affairs is the nation’s leading news and policy intelligence platform focused on state governments. We combine nonpartisan coverage of Statehouses across the country alongside state government data and AI-native tools into a singular platform. We inform and empower decision makers, policy professionals and citizens through our award-winning journalism and data – delivering profound insights to help our customers decode and act on state politics and policy. We’re building a category-defining business that will reshape America as we strengthen visibility into what’s happening and why at the state level. As a Software Engineering Intern, you’ll join our engineering team in Washington, DC and ship real features to real users, not side projects. You’ll work across the full stack: React/Next.js interfaces, Node APIs, and Postgres data models that keep up with petabyte-scale content. One sprint you might help prototype a semantic-search UI backed by vector embeddings. The next, you might build part of a real-time collaboration layer that lets policy analysts co-author annotations and compare version histories without refreshing the page.

Requirements

Currently pursuing a bachelor’s or graduate degree in computer science, computer engineering or a related field
Expected graduation in December 2027 or May 2028
Experience building web applications through coursework, internships, research, hackathons or personal projects
Familiarity with React (or a similar frontend framework) and Node.js (or another backend language)
Working knowledge of SQL and relational database design (e.g., Postgres)
Ability to break an open-ended problem into concrete milestones and to communicate progress clearly
Must be authorized to work in the United States without current or future employer sponsorship

Nice To Haves

Experience with Next.js, TypeScript or MongoDB
Exposure to Docker, CI/CD (e.g., GitHub Actions) or a cloud platform (AWS preferred)
Interest in or exposure to search, vector databases, RAG or other AI/ML-driven features
Projects using data visualization (D3, Recharts) or rich-text editors (Slate, TipTap)
Prior internship, startup or significant open-source experience
Experience using LLM coding tools in your own projects

Responsibilities

Ship vertical product slices with your mentor and team: Figma wireframe, React component, Node handler, SQL/Mongo query, deployed on AWS via Docker and GitHub Actions.
Help build fast, delightful data workflows such as instant search, real-time diffing and collaborative annotation, with sub-200 ms interactions over large datasets.
Work with design and product on thin-slice scoping, experiment flags and measuring customer outcomes.
Instrument and improve your work with dashboards, structured logs and feature-flag rollouts, and join our blameless post-mortems.
Practice product craftsmanship through Storybook-driven UI, shared design tokens, and code reviews that coach rather than gatekeep.
Use AI coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) every day to speed up coding and debugging.