Forward Deployed Engineer Internship

**Position** Forward Deployed Engineer (Intern) **Duration** 400 hours. Approximately 10 weeks full time, or part time by arrangement **Reports to** Engineering Manager **Works closely with** Developers, Delivery Managers, Delivery Coordinator and clients **Location** 90 Symonds Street, Grafton, Auckland 1010 **Start date** October/November **After the internship** Opportunity to be considered for a permanent role **About the internship:** Decoded builds smart products and scalable tech centred around AI-first workflows. A forward deployed engineer is someone who works at the point where our technology meets a real client problem. You sit with the people who have the problem, understand it properly, and build something that solves it. It is a different shape to a normal development internship. You will not spend ten weeks on an isolated side project nobody uses. You will be in real client conversations, building real things, and seeing what happens when they meet real users. This is a genuine role with genuine work. We will give you real problems, and we expect you to have a go at them. It is a paid internship, and for the right person there is a real opportunity to move into a permanent role with us at the end of it. **What you will be doing:** ***Building*** * Prototype and build solutions to real client problems, usually quickly and usually with AI in the loop. * Work with large language models in practice: prompting, retrieval, tool use, and the unglamorous work of making the output reliable enough to trust. * Ship what you build so it is deployed, working and in front of people, not sitting on your laptop. * Iterate based on what actually happens when someone uses it, rather than what you assumed would happen. ***Working with clients*** * Sit in on client sessions and discovery conversations alongside our Delivery Managers and engineers. * Learn to ask the questions that get to the real problem, which is usually not the one first described. * Demonstrate what you have built and take feedback on it directly. * Write up what you learned so the rest of the team benefits from it. ***Learning how a studio actually works*** * Work in our codebase with our tools, standards and code review process. * Take part in stand-ups, planning and retros as a member of the team. * Get your code reviewed by senior engineers, and learn from what comes back. * Work alongside our onshore and offshore developers. **What we are looking for:** We care about what you can do and how you think, not how many years you have done it for. ***Essential*** * You can write code and have built something you can show us. * You know how to work with AI coding tools such as Claude and Cursor, and you use them well. That means knowing what to ask for, how to give a model the right context, when to accept what it gives you and when to throw it away. * You are studying software engineering, computer science or similar, or you have taught yourself to an equivalent level. * You are comfortable talking to people. A significant part of this role is human, not technical, and you will be in front of clients. * You learn fast. * You would rather ask a question early than quietly stay stuck for two days. * A solid understanding of the code you produce and AI coding tools. * Genuine curiosity about AI and what it can and cannot do in a real product. ***Nice to have*** * Any hands-on experience with LLM APIs, even from personal projects. * Familiarity with Git, and some exposure to how software gets deployed. * Something you built because you wanted it to exist, not because it was assigned. **What you will get out of it:** * Real, shipped work you can point to and talk about in detail. * Practical experience building AI-driven products, which is difficult to get anywhere else at this stage of a career. * Mentoring from senior engineers, and code review that will make you better. * Exposure to clients and commercial reality, not just to a codebase. * A genuine opportunity to move into a permanent role at Decoded. We run this internship to find people we want to keep, not to fill a gap for ten weeks. Any permanent offer would depend on your performance during the internship and on business need at the time, and we will be straight with you about where you stand well before the end. **Selection process:** We select on what you can actually do, not on how well you interview. The process has four steps. ***1\. Apply*** * Your CV, or a LinkedIn profile. * A link to something you have built. A repository, live site or short video walkthrough is fine. Anything is fine. * A few sentences on a problem you would like to solve with AI, and how you would approach it. We are interested in your thinking, not a polished proposal. ***2\. Shortlisting*** * We review every application and shortlist from there. Everyone who applies will hear back either way. ***3\. Practical project*** * Shortlisted candidates are given a small project to complete in their own time. It is designed to be realistic rather than to take over your week, and you will have a clear brief and a clear deadline. * You can use AI tools while working on it. We do too. What we care about is the thinking and the judgement behind what you produce. * If anything in the brief is unclear, ask us. Asking good questions counts in your favour. ***4\. Presentation to the selection panel*** * You present your project to a small panel from our team, covering what you built, the decisions you made, and what you would do differently with more time. * We are looking at how you think and how you explain yourself, as much as at the finished result. Being able to talk through your work is a core part of a forward deployed role. * Expect questions. Not knowing something is fine. How you handle not knowing it is what we are watching. **If needed, a final conversation** * Where we need to, we will follow the presentation with a short interview before making a decision. **Interns are selected on the strength of the project and the presentation.** **How to apply:** Send your application to **admin@decoded.digital** with the email subject: Forward Deployed Engineer Internship. Applications close 15 Sep 2026\.