Software Engineering Intern/Co-op - 2026 Fall
Ship real product inside a fast-moving startup while building AI systems used daily by dealership teams.
This is an in-person role in our Kitchener/Waterloo office starting September 2026. Only apply if you can work legally in Canada.
Deadline to apply: July 31, 2026.
Clearline's software engineering team is looking for an intern/co-op who wants to ship real product inside a fast-moving startup.
You'll join a small, senior engineering team building Clearline's AI operating system for dealership revenue, a platform that captures, routes, and converts every inbound and outbound customer interaction across sales and service.
Joining an early-stage, high-growth startup means you'll learn and do more in four months with us than you would in a year in many traditional roles.
As an early and influential team member, you'll help shape our company culture, engineering practices, and your own personal development. The experience will prepare you to start your own company or join a high-performing engineering team in a future co-op term or full-time role.
What You'll Do
- Ship real product: Design, build, test, and deploy customer-facing features across Clearline's web app and AI workflow platform.
- Full-stack ownership: Work across backend APIs, data pipelines, and front-end UI used by dealership teams to manage calls, texts, appointments, and lead follow-ups.
- AI-native development: Build and iterate on AI-driven workflows across voice, SMS, lead follow-up logic, routing, and scoring. Use LLM tools to accelerate development and testing.
- Quality and reliability: Write unit and integration tests. Help monitor production performance and reliability for systems that dealerships rely on daily to capture revenue.
- Move fast: Tackle one-day fixes, one-week features, and small end-to-end projects. Participate in stand-ups, product reviews, and shipping cycles.
- Customer-driven building: Sit in on dealer calls, demos, and onboarding sessions to understand real-world workflows and pain points, then translate that into shipped improvements.
- Own outcomes: Ship code to production, monitor real usage, debug issues, and iterate based on live customer behavior.
What We're Looking For
- Enrolled in a computer science, software engineering, or related bachelor's program and eligible for a co-op or internship term. Third to fifth year is preferred.
- Experience with at least one backend framework, such as Rails, Django, or Node, and one front-end framework, such as React, Vue, or similar.
- Comfortable with basic SQL and Git/GitHub.
- Interest in building AI-powered products across LLMs, voice, automation, and workflows, and using AI coding tools such as Codex, Claude Code, or Cursor.
- Product mindset: you care about UI and UX polish and understand that software exists to solve real operational problems.
- Strong communication skills and comfort collaborating with product, design, and go-to-market teams.
- Bias for action: you're comfortable with ambiguity, move quickly, and take ownership of what you ship.
Interview Process
- Intro and initial screen (20 minutes): A screening call to understand your background and fit for the role.
- Technical interview (60 minutes): An in-person interview focused on how you think and approach a technical problem.
- Offer: Successful candidates will receive a decision quickly after the final interview.
