Junior Software Engineer Intern (Hybrid) Lighthouse Hiring Innovations

About Lighthouse Hiring Innovations

Lighthouse Hiring Innovations is a proud Canadian AI-driven startup on a mission to bring efficiency and transparency to the hiring process. Our platform automates resume screening and leverages machine learning to match best-fit candidates with hiring managers—reducing time-to-hire and giving recruiters back precious hours.

What's in it for you:

Compensation & Growth: Earn competitive compensation: $25/hr for 40 hours
Stock Options: You'll receive meaningful equity through stock options, sharing directly in the success and growth of the company.
Flexible & Remote: Work with a flexible schedule—just ensure collaboration overlap with our core hours. Work remotely for most of the week. Expected to attend our downtown Toronto office once a week.
Career Development: Report directly to our CTO, Sebastian Lopez, offering direct mentorship and strategic exposure to startup leadership and operations.
Agile & Collaborative Culture: Be part of a small, tight-knit team where your voice is heard. We run weekly sprints, encourage open communication, and keep bureaucracy to a minimum. Participate in all stages of product development, from ideation and architecture to release and support.

Our Hiring Process (transparent & straightforward):

Initial Phone Call (30 mins): Understand your background and ambition.
Technical Interview (60 mins): Technical component with some short answer questions along with a realistic scenario.
Final Conversation & Culture Fit (60 mins): Meet the founding team to ensure mutual fit.

Position Overview

As a Junior Software Engineer Intern at Lighthouse, you’ll get hands-on experience working across our full tech stack—front-end, back-end, and everything in between. You’ll collaborate directly with the CTO and CEO to design, build, and ship new features that have real impact on our product roadmap. This role is perfect for a motivated engineer who is finishing their bachelor’s degree in Computer Science (or a related field) and wants to make a tangible difference at an early-stage startup. You’ll be empowered to speak up, propose new ideas, and see your work in production as we continue scaling our AI-driven hiring platform.

What You’ll Do

Participate in Solutioning & Design

Work alongside our CTO and CEO to understand business goals and translate them into technical requirements. Brainstorm architecture and design patterns for new functionality—both server-side and client-side.
Review technical proposals and provide feedback on trade-offs, performance, and maintainability.

Implement & Ship Features

Contribute to our Python-based RESTful back end, building new endpoints, services, and integrations.
Collaborate on the front-end codebase (JavaScript/TypeScript/React) to create intuitive, responsive UIs.
Write unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests to ensure high code quality and minimize regression.

Production & Integration Support

Help troubleshoot issues in development, staging, and production environments (Cloud Run).
Assist with monitoring dashboards, alerting rules, and root-cause analysis when bugs arise.

Collaboration & Teamwork

Be an active member of sprint planning, stand-ups, and retrospectives—sharing progress, blockers, and ideas.
Voice your insights throughout the development cycle: we want you to challenge assumptions, suggest optimizations, and drive innovation.

Continuous Learning

Stay up-to-date with best practices in software engineering, code quality, and emerging technologies.
Seek feedback on your work and iterate to improve your code, design, and overall approach.

What You’ll Bring

Educational Background

Currently finishing (or recently completed) a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

Strong Fundamentals

Solid understanding of algorithms, data structures, and core design patterns.
Familiarity with software architecture principles (e.g., separation of concerns, microservice design).

Back-End Experience

Comfortable building or consuming RESTful APIs in Python (Flask, FastAPI, Django, or similar).
Hands-on experience writing database queries and schema design using SQL (PostgreSQL preferred).

Front-End Experience

Proficiency with JavaScript or TypeScript, and knowledge of a modern front-end framework (React, Vue, or Angular).
Understanding responsive design concepts and basic UX/UI principles.

Version Control & CI/CD

Working knowledge of Git and collaborative workflows (e.g., feature branches, pull requests, code reviews).
Familiarity with setting up or consuming CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or similar).

Soft Skills & Attitude

Strong communication skills—you’re not afraid to ask clarifying questions or propose alternative approaches.
A growth mindset: eager to learn new tools, frameworks, and coding best practices.
Self-motivated and comfortable working in a small team where everyone wears multiple hats.
A passion for improving processes and delivering measurable impact to both hiring teams and candidates.

Bonus Skills (Nice to Have)

Cloud & DevOps

Experience with Google Cloud Platform, particularly Cloud Run, Cloud Build, or Cloud Storage.
Familiarity with Docker containers.

Microservices & Event-Driven Design

Exposure to building or maintaining microservices—contextual awareness of inter-service communication (REST, Pub/Sub).
Understanding of asynchronous task queues (Celery, Cloud Tasks).

Testing & Automation

Prior experience with test-driven development or writing comprehensive integration tests.
Knowledge of performance profiling tools or logging/monitoring frameworks.

UX/UI Design

Any background in designing intuitive user flows or creating wireframes/mockups for web applications.