What are the responsibilities and job description for the Scalable Systems Intern position at Pivotor AI?
Scalable Systems Intern Unpaid
In Office (Fremont, CA) || Internship || pivotor.ai || Apply at sweety@pivotor.ai
About the Job
Pivotor AI is a conversational career discovery platform. Most systems built to match people to opportunity were designed to read credentials, not careers. That gap is most visible in healthcare, where two people can share the same title and be doing completely different work. We are building a system that reads the work behind the role and finds what is genuinely possible next.
This is an early team. The work you do here will be visible, consequential, and yours. Whatever your function, you will be shaping something genuinely new.
What You'll Do
- Build and maintain FastAPI REST APIs using SQLAlchemy ORM and MVC architecture for internal services and partner integrations
- Implement secure authentication using Firebase Auth (OAuth, secure cookies)
- Develop and productionize proof-of-concept features across backend, data, and AI systems
- Design ETL pipelines with Apache NiFi for scraping, validation, and storage across MongoDB, S3, and LLM endpoints
- Build high-throughput scraping pipelines using BeautifulSoup, Selenium, multiprocessing, and rate-limiting strategies
- Implement NLP pipelines for deduplication, entity matching, and enrichment using spaCy, regex, and LLMs
- Work across AWS infrastructure (EC2, RDS/PostgreSQL, Lambda, S3, IAM, VPC) to deploy and scale services
- Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions and production services using NGINX and PM2
- Contribute to LLM RAG systems, MCP server integrations, and LangGraph agent workflows
- Build internal tools and dashboards using Next.js and Tailwind
- Whiteboard. Iterate. Launch.
Who You Are
You think in systems, not endpoints
You ask why before how
You prototype before you present
You'd rather be in the room than on a thread
What You Bring
0.5 to 1 year of backend engineering experience (projects, internships, or coursework count)
Strong Python backend development experience (FastAPI, Flask, or similar frameworks)
Experience building REST APIs and working with ORMs like SQLAlchemy
Familiarity with SQL and NoSQL databases (PostgreSQL, MongoDB; graph databases a plus)
Experience building data pipelines, scraping systems, or ETL workflows
Exposure to NLP pipelines, LLM APIs, or RAG architectures
Familiarity with cloud infrastructure (AWS) and deployment workflows
Hands-on experience with MCP, Cursor, or Claude for AI-assisted development (mandatory)
- A GitHub portfolio that demonstrates how you think and build systems
Requirements
Available immediately and on-site in Fremont
- Must accept terms of an unpaid internship with potential for conversion
Why Join
On-site, because whiteboards beat Slack.
This starts unpaid. The 90-day conversation is about equity and full-time.
Our current team includes people from Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and Carnegie Mellon.
E-Verified employer. Students at UC Berkeley, Santa Clara University, and partner institutions often earn course credit.
About Pivotor AI
Pivotor AI is a small team building with focus and a high bar for craft. The feedback loops are short, strong ideas move fast, and the work is hands-on across every function. We are still early, which means the decisions being made now will shape what this becomes.
We are on-site in Fremont. The environment is collaborative and the energy is high. We have a gym and a snack bar on-site. Everyone is close to the work and close to each other. Some roles may be remote or flexible depending on the work and stage of the team.
Pivotor AI is an equal opportunity employer. We value different backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences.