Developing a Professional Internship Program for Software Engineering

The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) operates multiple initiatives aimed at broadening participation in cyberinfrastructure (CI) and high-performance computing (HPC). One of these programs is the TACC Professional Internship Program (TPIP) for software engineering, an initiative that provides early career or non-traditional background participants with an immersive hands-on team-based experience in the use of software development best practices within a production HPC environment. TPIP aims to provide participants with the foundational skills in support of productive careers. We detail here the motivation, implementation, and structure for this program, as well as the impacts, insights, and recommendations resulting from the past eight years.