Backend Software Developer Intern Jobs in Stanford, CA

Location: San Francisco Bay Area

Compensation: $135,000 - 200,000 USD / year

Palantir builds the world’s leading software for data‑driven decisions and operations. By bringing the right data to the people who need it, our platforms empower partners to develop lifesaving drugs, forecast supply‑chain disruptions, locate missing children, and more.

Backend Software Engineers at Palantir build software at scale to transform how organizations use data. Engineers are involved throughout the product lifecycle—from idea generation, design, and prototyping, to production delivery. You will collaborate closely with technical and non‑technical teammates to understand customers’ problems and build products that solve them. Your work will be autonomous, with independent decision‑making in a supportive community that challenges and grows you into a strong technical contributor and engineering leader.

• Build performant search and indexing ecosystems for fine‑grained permissioned data.
• Contribute to open‑source data processing libraries, integrating the latest innovations to achieve performance gains.
• Build the distributed systems that power large‑scale compute workloads, orchestrating and efficiently scheduling hundreds of thousands of containers every hour.
• Design architecture and opinionated APIs to keep application developers on the happy path.
• Trace and observe performance in high‑scale distributed microservice architectures.
• Build reliable, performant, and scalable systems for storage, authentication, or asset serving to enable other product teams to build robust applications without deep domain expertise.
• Automate the deployment, management, and operations of complex distributed systems like Cassandra, Elasticsearch, Kafka, and more across different environments.

• Backend languages, including Java, Rust, and Go.
• Open‑source technologies such as Cassandra, ElasticSearch, Spark, Kafka, Kubernetes, and Flink.
• Industry‑standard build tooling, including Gradle and GitHub.

• Demonstrated ability to collaborate and empathize with a variety of individuals, iterating with users and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Ability to learn new technology and concepts, even without deep prior experience; experience developing highly‑available distributed systems is beneficial, but not required.
• Bias toward quality and thoughtful consideration of edge cases; defensive coding against all possibilities.
• Build solutions and APIs with users in mind while maintaining a high engineering bar, centralizing and abstracting complexity away from our users.
• Active US Security clearance, or eligibility and willingness to obtain one, is beneficial but not required.

• Engineering background in Computer Science, Mathematics, Software Engineering, Physics, or a similar field.
• Strong coding skills with demonstrated proficiency in programming languages such as Java, C++, Python, Rust, or similar.
• Familiarity with storage and data processing systems, cloud infrastructure, and other technical tools.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; ability to iterate quickly with teammates, incorporating feedback and maintaining a high quality standard.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Life and disability coverage
• Paid leave for new parents and emergency back‑up care for all parents
• Family planning support, including fertility, adoption, and surrogacy assistance
• Stipend to help with expenses that come with a new child
• Commuter benefits
• Relocation assistance
• Unlimited paid time off
• Two weeks paid time off built into the end of each year

The estimated salary range for this position is $135,000 - $200,000 per year. Total compensation may also include Restricted Stock units, sign‑on bonus, and other potential future incentives. The exact total will be determined on a case‑by‑case basis, based on relevant qualifications, experience, and skills. This estimate excludes the value of any sign‑on bonus, benefits offered, and potential long‑term incentives.

Palantir is committed to promoting a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion and is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity and affirmative action employer. Palantir does not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, veteran status, disability status, or any other legally protected characteristic. Palantir provides reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with physical or mental disabilities. Please see the United States Department of Labor’s EEO poster, EEO poster supplement, and Pay Transparency Notice for additional information.

Palantir is committed to making the job application process accessible to everyone. If you have a disability and need to request a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application or hiring process, please let us know.