First internship
Build one hardware project you can defend. Then follow the getting hired page: ask for referrals and talk to recruiters at career fairs. After about 20 quiet applications, reevaluate your resume, the channel, and the roles you target, then keep going. Internship posts open before new-graduate posts, so apply in late summer and fall. If a summer still falls through, join a student design team, do campus research, or take a test or technician role.
Alex Doe is the running example. Alex is earning a B.S. in Electrical Engineering at [University], with a GPA of [X.XX]/4.00 and a graduation line of Expected Spring 2027. Every bracket is a number you measure yourself.
No experience yet
Section titled “No experience yet”The way out of the no-experience loop is a finished build you can talk through. One student landed two EE internships at a community college before taking any core EE class (opens in a new tab). Their resume showed circuit design, a PCB (a board you design), and embedded software. The first offer came from those projects. They now have four internships, two of them at aerospace companies, including one that builds lunar landers. The other ways in they named were an engineering club and unpaid work for a local company.
A job outside engineering is a start, not a gap. Alex's first draft listed only a Sales Associate job, Summer 2023–Summer 2024, with no build beside it. A senior working fast food asked (opens in a new tab) how a job like that becomes a first role in the space industry, and the answer is the same: add one build you can defend.
The same question comes up every term. Three threads cover it well: internships with little experience (opens in a new tab), an internship in your second year (opens in a new tab), and a second year with no experience yet (opens in a new tab).
Recruiting calendar
Section titled “Recruiting calendar”Hardware internship recruiting follows its own calendar. One engineer with intern offers from Apple and IBM wrote that public interview prep for hardware roles is scarce (opens in a new tab). They later wrote that recruiting guides for those roles are scarce too (opens in a new tab). In NACE's 2026 Internship & Co-op Report, employers expected to hire 3.9 percent more interns for 2025–26 than the year before (opens in a new tab).
Internship posts come out before new-graduate posts. On August 22, 2026, one student saw many summer 2027 internship posts and only a few 2027 new-graduate posts (opens in a new tab). One commenter planned to wait until October or November, once most internship roles are filled. Commenters also named fall as a window for intern posts. The recruiting timeline section on the first full-time role page covers the new-graduate side.
Check company career pages, the fair, and one daily list. SimplifyJobs keeps a GitHub repo named Summer2027-Internships (opens in a new tab). One post on X lists hardware internship postings (opens in a new tab) next to software, data science, AI, quant, and product management.
If this summer falls through
Section titled “If this summer falls through”One missed summer is a setback you can recover from. Commenters told a student about to start their final year (opens in a new tab) to keep applying and to add a bridge in the same term:
- A design team, such as FSAE (opens in a new tab) (a student car-racing competition) or a space team.
- A research seat, like Alex's Summer 2025 role as Undergraduate Research Assistant, [University lab].
- An internship that runs 8 to 12 months. Extend graduation if you get one. Those long stays often turn into a full-time offer.
- A semester-long co-op. A co-op is a long internship split across school terms.
Co-op rules differ by school. Georgia Tech's co-op program alternates semesters of full-time study with semesters of full-time work over five years (opens in a new tab). Northeastern requires three full-time terms, a co-op preparation course, and a 2.0 GPA before a student can search (opens in a new tab). Purdue ECE runs its own cooperative education program (opens in a new tab). Ask your department how its program works.
Read your program's co-op terms before you negotiate pay. The Narrow cases section below has one example.
The same worry fills threads from a junior with no summer internship (opens in a new tab), a student with no internship at all (opens in a new tab), a sophomore (opens in a new tab), a senior about to graduate without one (opens in a new tab), and a student graduating in 2027 asking how hard the new-grad search is (opens in a new tab).
Paths from zero to a first internship
Section titled “Paths from zero to a first internship”Paths to a first internship
No experience yet
A first internship comes from proof that you can build and finish something.
Pick one or more
Personal hardware project
Build one you can defend line by line, such as a small version of what your target company makes. Start free with lab scopes, KiCad and the Altium student license.
Student design team
Racing and rocket teams count as experience. Join in year one and you have something real to discuss at a career fair.
Research with a professor
Undergrad research counts as experience. Many professors can also refer students directly.
Bench skills in the lab
Learn the oscilloscope and function generator until you can use them without help.
Resume
Show your year, graduation date, GPA and classes at first glance. List each tool next to the work you did with it.
Career fairs and referrals
People get you past the resume stack. Meet companies at fairs, and ask professors and alumni. Internships post in late summer and fall.
No interviews after about 20 applications? Reevaluate the resume, the channel, and the targeting, then keep going.
Hardware interviews
Drill digital logic, timing, op-amps and filters. After a rejection, study the questions you missed first.
First internship offer
If this summer falls through
One missed summer is a setback you can recover from. Try a design team, a research seat, an 8 to 12 month internship, or a semester-long co-op. Long internships often lead to full-time offers. Then build more proof.
Meet the company at a fair, or ask a professor who can refer you (opens in a new tab). You can also take a test role or a technician role (opens in a new tab), and write down the next title you want before you start. One graduate who faced constant rejection (opens in a new tab) took a technician stint on the way, and the section on test or technician roles as a way in on the hardware page has that story.
Government programs are another way in. NSF's REU program funds summer research for undergraduates at universities (opens in a new tab), and DOE's SULI program places undergraduates in research at national labs (opens in a new tab). Several REU sites did not run in summer 2026 because their NSF funding was not renewed in time. Examples are Notre Dame's SMASH Engineering REU (opens in a new tab), Cornell's PARADIM REU (opens in a new tab), and Harvey Mudd's CS REU (opens in a new tab). Apply to more than one site and keep a backup. NASA's Pathways internships can convert to a full-time role at NASA after graduation (opens in a new tab), but conversion is not guaranteed (opens in a new tab). The Navy runs NREIP, a 10-week research internship for undergraduate and graduate students (opens in a new tab), and the AFRL Scholars Program offers paid internships with Air Force Research Laboratory scientists and engineers (opens in a new tab). Each program sets its own deadline and eligibility, so read the page early.
The dates figure on this page puts Alex's lines in date order. It uses a fuller version of Alex's list than the one-page resume in the Alex's finished page section on the resume page, which keeps two builds and one job. The hardware page has the full lines for each build.
Alex's dates
Summer 2023–Summer 2024
Sales Associate, Retail store
Fall 2024
Bluetooth Battery Monitor
Fall 2024–Spring 2026
Power Subsystem Engineer, [Student satellite team]
Spring 2025
FPGA [N]-Band Audio Equalizer
Summer 2025
Undergraduate Research Assistant, [University lab]
Fall 2025–Spring 2026
Synchronous Buck Converter for a CubeSat Power Board
Expected Spring 2027
B.S. Electrical Engineering
Narrow cases
Section titled “Narrow cases”UBC's engineering co-op terms (opens in a new tab) say a student accepts the salary offered and does not negotiate it without a co-op career advisor's permission. Read your own program's terms before you push on pay. For pay context, NACE's 2026 Guide to Compensation for Interns & Co-ops puts the average hourly wage at $23.35 for bachelor's-level interns and $24.46 for co-op students (opens in a new tab).
Checklist
Section titled “Checklist”Do these before you send more applications.
- Defend one build line by line (opens in a new tab), or name a part you owned on a team.
- Run the oscilloscope and the function generator with no help (opens in a new tab) before you list them.
- Use the lab scope, a free simulator such as Wokwi, or a shared dev kit (opens in a new tab) before you buy a tool.
Content by eeprep contributors (opens in a new tab), licensed CC BY 4.0 (opens in a new tab). Code licensed MIT (opens in a new tab). Source is in the eeprep (opens in a new tab), resume-generator (opens in a new tab), and company-lists (opens in a new tab) repositories.