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Internship Chip Design Jobs in Colorado (NOW HIRING)

Internship Chip Design information

What is an internship in chip design?

An internship in chip design is a temporary, practical work experience where students or recent graduates assist in the design, development, and testing of semiconductor chips, such as microprocessors or integrated circuits. Interns typically work with engineering teams, learning about electronic design automation (EDA) tools, circuit simulation, and layout design. The role offers hands-on exposure to the chip development process, from concept to testing, and is valuable for those pursuing careers in electrical engineering or related fields.

What types of projects and responsibilities can I expect during an internship in chip design?

As an intern in chip design, you can expect to work on a variety of tasks that may include assisting with schematic capture, running simulation tools, performing layout verification, and supporting senior engineers with design documentation. You will likely participate in team meetings and collaborate with both hardware and verification engineers, gaining exposure to the full chip development lifecycle. The projects assigned are typically tailored to your skill level, offering hands-on experience with industry-standard EDA tools and methodologies. This environment provides an excellent opportunity to develop technical and teamwork skills while contributing to real-world semiconductor products.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as an internship chip design, and why are they important?

To thrive as an Internship Chip Design, you need a solid background in electrical engineering fundamentals, digital/analog circuit design, and a relevant academic degree in progress. Familiarity with hardware description languages (such as VHDL or Verilog), EDA tools (like Cadence or Synopsys), and simulation software is typically required. Strong analytical thinking, attention to detail, and effective teamwork are crucial soft skills in this role. These competencies are vital to ensure accurate chip functionality, efficient design cycles, and successful collaboration on complex engineering projects.

What is the difference between Internship Chip Design vs Chip Design Engineer?

AspectInternship Chip DesignChip Design Engineer
Required CredentialsEnrolled in or recent graduate of Electrical Engineering or related fieldBachelor's or Master's in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related
Work EnvironmentInternship programs, team projects, supervised tasksFull-time professional setting, independent project work
Employer & Industry UsageInternship positions in semiconductor and electronics companiesFull-time roles in chip design companies, tech firms, or semiconductor industry
Comparison Search IntentLearning about entry-level opportunities and trainingUnderstanding professional career roles and responsibilities

Internship Chip Design positions are entry-level opportunities aimed at students or recent graduates, focusing on training and skill development under supervision. Chip Design Engineers are full-time professionals responsible for designing, testing, and implementing integrated circuits independently. While internships provide foundational experience, engineers hold advanced responsibilities in the industry.

What are the most commonly searched types of Chip Design jobs in Colorado?

The most popular types of Chip Design jobs in Colorado are:

What are popular job titles related to Internship Chip Design jobs in Colorado?

For Internship Chip Design jobs in Colorado, the most frequently searched job titles are:

What cities in Colorado are hiring for Internship Chip Design jobs?

Cities in Colorado with the most Internship Chip Design job openings:

Internship: Junior Developer - AI Operations

Boulder, CO • On-site

$20 - $26.25/hr

Other

Posted 3 days ago

New


Job description

This is a Paid Internship Position
About Mesa Quantum
Mesa Quantum is building chip-scale quantum sensing systems for resilient timing and navigation. Our work
sits at the intersection of atomic physics, photonics, RF electronics, and precision manufacturing. Backed
by top-tier deep-tech investors and the U.S. Department of Defense, Mesa Quantum is rapidly scaling and
actively recruiting exceptional innovators who want to build the future of quantum technology from the
ground up.
The Role
Mesa Quantum's knowledge is spread across nine platforms, and a lot of it lives only in people's heads.
MQoS is our answer to that - a growing, queryable information layer over the whole company. It runs on
a governed API with row-level security and reaches into every authoritative source we have: parts and
orders, lab measurements and instruments, GitLab repositories, vendor activity, documents, conversations.
The point is that a question gets a live answer, instead of a two-day hunt or a tap on somebody's shoulder.
MQoS is the largest piece of a wider surface that one person currently builds and operates: the network and
access that let engineers reach lab instruments from anywhere; the project-management and reporting
spine the team plans in; the engineering tooling that unblocks chip design; and the AI workflows that tie it
all together. That one person is now the constraint on all of it.
We are hiring a Junior Developer for AI Operations to be the hands on the keyboard across that whole
surface. You will be handed things that are already designed - a schema, an endpoint, a server to stand
up, a workflow to automate - and be very good at implementing them well and getting them into
production. You will also be the person a physicist or an engineer goes to when something they depend on
stops working.
This is not a single-product role, and it is not a help-desk role. Roughly half the job is building; the other half
is making the people around you faster. You will use Claude Code every day - we take that seriously, we
will teach you properly, and every change is reviewed before it ships.
What You'll Do
  • Extend MQoS - new domains, new sources, and the migrations, API endpoints and websurfaces that
  • make them answerable
  • Stand up and operate internal infrastructure: Linux servers, containers, backups, monitoring, VPN and
  • network access
  • Keep engineers and physicists able to reach lab instruments remotely, and keep it working as the setup
  • changes
  • Build and maintain the Notion project-management and reporting spine the team runs on - structured
  • databases, dashboards, sprint automation - and fix it the day someone says it is broken
  • Get lab measurements off local instrument machines into the database, and into dashboards people
  • actually open
  • Install and operate engineering and vendor tooling - license servers, integrations, the unglamorous
  • plumbing that unblocks a design team
  • Turn research code and one-off scripts into maintained tools, with tests, configuration, and a runbook
  • Build AI-assisted workflows that do real work, plus the monitoring that proves they are actually doing it

The one thing we screen hardest for
You drive the AI. It does not drive you. Claude will produce a plausible first draft of almost anything here,
and it will do it fast. What it will not do is care whether the answer is true. The people who are good at this
direct the work, interrogate what comes back, and test it before they believe it. The people who aren't
produce confident, wrong results faster than anyone can catch them.
That leads to the habit we actually hire for: building things that tell the truth about themselves. A
database replica here sat 73 days out of date behind a green health check. A service that reads vendor
email stopped reading it and went on reporting itself healthy. Software that is broken and says so is a small
problem. Software that is broken and reports success is how a company makes decisions on numbers that
aren't true. We want work that fails loudly, explains its own reasoning, and can be verified by someone who
wasn't there when you built it.
Expect us to ask about something you built or were handed, what you checked before you trusted it, and
how you would know if it quietly stopped working.
Requirements
Qualifications
  • Able to follow multi-step logic, work out where a process goes wrong, and explain why - this matters more than any language you already know
  • Comfortable being handed unfamiliar territory: a database one day, a network setting the next, a vendor's installer the day after
  • Plans before building and finishes what they start: spec, branch, tests, review, staging, production
  • Can read a written specification and implement it faithfully, and asks about what's underspecified instead of guessing
  • Hands-on coding experience in any language, and able to read code you didn't write
  • Willing to learn SQL properly, and careful enough not to run anything against production you haven't tried elsewhere first
  • When you hit something you have never done - a Linux service, a vendor installer, an unfamiliar database - you work through it with Claude and come out understanding what you did, not just that it worked
  • Treats a colleague's broken dashboard as a real problem - half this job is unblocking other people
  • Comfortable saying "I don't understand that" out loud to a PhD physicist
  • Helpful but not required: TypeScript, Python, Postgres, Docker, CI, Git branching, networking, time-series data, or any experience working near hardware
  • No physics background, CS degree, or prior industry experience required - our last lab intern was an undergrad who used Claude to create a software tool that the photonics lab now relies on for a core capability, and which accelerated development 8x

This is an internship that pays $20-$25 per hour, based on relevant technical and/or industry experience.
Mesa Quantum is an equal opportunity employer and we welcome applications from all backgrounds regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability, or any other classification protected by law.