15 Bay Area Business Internships for High School Students
If you're considering a career in business, entrepreneurship, or finance, or even thinking about a startup, getting some experience before high school ends can put you way ahead of the curve.
What do Bay Area business internships involve?
The Bay Area gives you a pretty big advantage, since it's packed with startups, tech companies, founders, and people building businesses from scratch. You are surrounded by people testing ideas, launching products, raising money, and figuring out what works, and an internship here lets you step into one of the most business-friendly areas in the world.
Why pursue a business internship in high school?
A business internship can teach you how a company operates firsthand. You might work on market research, competitor analysis, or customer research, and there is also something useful about having a real project to point to on your college applications and resume.
With that, here's a list of 15 business internships for high school students in the Bay Area! For related opportunities, check out our guides on business internships for high school students in California and entrepreneurship internships for high school students in Silicon Valley.
Quick Look
11 paid internships: CLA, Meta Summer Academy, SFUSD, KP Launch, SF YouthWorks, Project Pull, and others, most tied to San Francisco or Bay Area residency.
1 fully virtual, entrepreneurship-focused option: Young Founders Lab, useful if you want to build your own venture rather than intern with an existing Bay Area organization, with need-based financial aid available.
6 city or district-run internships: SFUSD, SF YouthWorks, Project Pull, Mayor's Youth Employment & Education Program, SFPUC SSIP CityWorks, and EBMUD HSSI, all requiring San Francisco or specific district residency.
1 highly selective corporate internship: Meta Summer Academy, limited to sophomores residing in East Palo Alto, Belle Haven, or Redwood City.
Most internships run 6 to 8 weeks over the summer, with Genesys Works Bay Area extending into a full year-long placement for seniors.
15 Bay Area Business Internships for High School Students
1. CLA High School Internship Program
Location: Various CLA Offices across the country
Cost: None. A stipend is paid
Dates: One month from mid-June to mid-July
Application Deadline: Rolling; recruitment begins in the spring
Eligibility: High school students; at least 16 years old at the start of the program; able to attend the full four-week in-person program; reliable transportation; authorized to work in the United States without employment-based visa sponsorship; selected interns under 18 must submit required working papers
The CLA High School Internship Program puts you inside a professional services firm for four weeks, where you can see what happens behind the spreadsheets, tax forms, and client meetings. You'll shadow people working in accounting, tax, wealth management, digital, and consulting services, help with projects, and take part in case studies and team activities. You might spend part of the programme learning how one service line works and then see how another team approaches a completely different problem. It's a useful way to figure out whether accounting or one of the less obvious sides of professional services actually interests you.
2. Young Founders Lab
Cost: Varies depending on program type. Full financial aid available.
Location: This program is 100% virtual, with live, interactive workshops
Program Dates: Multiple cohorts throughout the year, including summer, fall, winter, and spring
Application Deadline: Varies according to cohort. You can access the application link here!
Eligibility: The program is currently open to all high school students
The Young Founder’s Lab is a start-up boot camp founded and run by Harvard entrepreneurs. In this program, you will work towards building a revenue-generating start-up that addresses a complex problem. You will also have the opportunity to be mentored by established entrepreneurs and professionals from Google, Microsoft, and X.
Apart from building the start-up itself, you will also participate in interactive classes on business fundamentals and business ideation, workshops and skill-building sessions, case studies, panel discussions, and more. The program is an excellent opportunity to delve into the world of business in high school and have a space to explore multiple theoretical as well as practical frameworks that lead to a successful business. You can check out the brochure for the program here.
3. Meta Summer Academy
Location: Meta Headquarters, Menlo Park, CA
Cost: Stipend provided (amount not specified)
Dates: June 15 – July 24; 30 hours per week
Application Deadline: February 14
Eligibility: High school sophomores (10th grade); full-year residents of East Palo Alto, Belle Haven, or Redwood City; minimum 2.0 GPA; no prior coding or technology experience required
Meta Summer Academy gives you six weeks to look at the business behind one of the world's biggest technology companies. You'll meet Meta employees, explore different roles, job-shadow professionals, work on projects, and learn how teams operate inside a large tech company. The programme also covers skills that show up constantly in business workplaces, including communication, teamwork, critical thinking, and professional problem-solving. If you're comparing business internships for high school students, the interesting part here is the range of roles you get to see, from technology and operations to the people and business functions that keep a company this large moving.
4. Ladder Internship Program
Location: Remote, work from anywhere in the world
Cost: Varies depending on program type (financial aid available)
Dates: Multiple cohorts throughout the year
Application Deadline: Spring (January), Summer (May), Fall (September), Winter (November)
Eligibility: Students who can work 10–20 hours/week for 8–12 weeks. Open to high school students, undergraduates, and gap year students!
Ladder Internships is a selective startup internship program for ambitious students. You'll work with a high-growth startup on real projects across industries including tech, AI/ML, health tech, marketing, journalism, consulting, and more. Ladder's startups are high-growth companies on average, raising over a million dollars — past founders include YCombinator alums and former employees of Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. You'll work closely with your manager and a Ladder Coach and present your work to the company at the end of the internship. You can apply here.
5. Lockheed Martin High School Internship
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Cost: None. Interns receive an hourly wage
Dates: Summer; 8 to 10 weeks
Application Deadline: Rolling based on open positions
Eligibility: Current high school students; at least 16 years old; legally authorized to work in the United States
The Lockheed Martin High School Internship program places students inside the administrative and business operations of an aerospace and defense company. You work in corporate departments to support human resources, finance, project management, or communications. The internship requires you to manage data, organize office workflows, and use corporate software to assist full-time staff. You are assigned a manager who provides instruction on workplace expectations and corporate systems. The role provides direct exposure to the daily operational functions required to run a large business.
6. SFUSD’s Summer Internships
Location: Various partner business locations in San Francisco, CA
Cost: None. A stipend is paid
Dates: Summer; six-week internships; minimum 20 hours per week
Application Deadline: Not specified
Eligibility: SFUSD high school sophomores and juniors; priority given to 11th grade students (rising seniors) who have not previously participated in an SFUSD internship
SFUSD’s Summer Internships let you spend six weeks inside a real workplace, with placements spread across several business and career sectors. Depending on your placement, you could work in office management, human resources, IT, hospitality, automotive services, or a nonprofit organisation. You'll also have a workplace mentor and take part in weekly work-based learning seminars, where you can unpack what you're doing on the job and learn from people working in that field. For students looking at business internships for high school students, the range of placements is probably the most interesting part because your actual work can look very different depending on the organisation you join.
7. KP Launch Internship
Location: Various Kaiser Permanente facilities across Northern California (including the Bay Area)
Cost: None. A stipend is paid
Dates: June 15 – July 31
Application Deadline: January 9
Eligibility: High school students and graduating seniors; ages 16–19 by June 1; priority given to juniors and seniors; available to work full-time for the entire program; legally authorized to work in the United States; permanent resident of Northern California
KP Launch takes the usual idea of a business internship and drops it into a healthcare organisation. For seven weeks, you'll work in administrative roles alongside healthcare professionals and see how a large healthcare system operates behind the clinical side. The programme also includes mentorship, networking, community service projects, and social events. You might be interested in medicine, but the work here is about understanding the people, systems, and administrative functions that keep a healthcare organisation running. That makes it an interesting option for business internships for high school students who want to explore healthcare management and operations.
8. SF YouthWorks
Location: Various City Departments in San Francisco, CA
Cost: None. A stipend is paid.
Dates: Summer session (June – July), seven weeks, 16–20 hours per week; school-year session (October – April), seven months, 6–10 hours per week
Application Deadline: Summer application available in April; school-year application available in August.
Eligibility: High school students entering or enrolled in grades 11–12; resident of San Francisco; attend a San Francisco high school; available to work a minimum of 16 hours per week during summer or 6 hours per week during the school year
SF YouthWorks puts you inside a San Francisco city department for seven weeks, so your workplace could be somewhere like the Public Library, Public Utilities Commission, or San Francisco International Airport. You'll receive job-readiness training, work with a City employee who serves as your mentor, and take part in career exploration events and community service. Your actual responsibilities depend on the department, which means you get to see how public services are organised and delivered from the inside. For a student interested in business internships, it's also a chance to see the operations, administration, and people-management side of a large public organisation.
9. Enterprise for Youth Internships
Location: Various partner locations across the San Francisco Bay Area, CA
Cost: None. A stipend is paid.
Dates: Year-round internship program with seasonal paid internship opportunities; participants first complete Job Readiness Training before applying for internships
Application Deadline: Rolling
Eligibility: High school students and young adults; San Francisco Bay Area youth; eligibility varies by internship opportunity
Enterprise for Youth starts you off with Job Readiness Training before matching you with a paid internship. Your placement could take you into professional services, technology, healthcare, climate justice, nonprofit work, or the arts, depending on the opportunity you choose. During the summer internship, you'll complete at least 75 hours of work and another 15 hours of professional development through weekly workshops. That means you spend actual time inside an organisation while also getting structured help with things like workplace communication and navigating your first professional role.
10. San Francisco International Airport Summer High School Internship
Location: San Francisco International Airport (SFO), San Francisco / San Mateo County, CA
Cost: None. A stipend is paid
Dates: June 22 – August 14; 20 hours per week
Application Deadline: April 7
Eligibility: High school students; enrolled in high school; minimum 2.5 GPA; at least 16 years old by the start of the internship; legally authorized to work in the United States; able to work the full internship schedule
At San Francisco International Airport, business is happening on a rather large scale. During this internship, you could work with airport staff in customer service, airport operations, or office administration and see how all those functions connect to keep an airport running. You'll interact with staff and travellers, handle workplace tasks, and learn how different departments operate. An airport is basically a small city with planes, so plenty is going on behind the departure boards: administration, operations, customer experience, coordination, and day-to-day problem solving.
11. Mayor’s Youth Employment & Education Program
Location: Various partner organizations in San Francisco, CA
Cost: None. A stipend is paid.
Dates: Academic year; paid job-readiness training followed by paid internships during the school year
Application Deadline: Varies by cohort
Eligibility: High school students; ages 14–17; attend school in or reside in San Francisco; eligible to work in the United States.
The Mayor’s Youth Employment & Education Program starts with paid job-readiness training before putting you into a real workplace. Past placements have included law firms, architectural firms, nonprofits, art studios, community centres, and city administration, so your work can look very different depending on where you're placed. The training covers the practical stuff that tends to get skipped in school: how a workplace functions, how you communicate with people on the job, and what employers expect from you. You then take those lessons into your internship and get a first look at how an organisation operates day to day.
12. Project Pull at San Francisco City Department
Location: Various City and County Departments in San Francisco, CA
Cost: None. A stipend is paid: $23 per hour
Dates: June 8 – July 31
Application Deadline: February 13
Eligibility: High school students; ages 15–19; minimum 2.75 GPA.
Project Pull gives you a paid placement inside a San Francisco city department, with the actual work changing according to where you're assigned. You could land in human resources, contracting, technology, public health, community engagement, environmental health, city administration, or another department. That makes the programme particularly interesting for business-minded students because you can see the administrative machinery behind a large organisation: contracts have to be managed, people have to be hired, budgets and services have to be coordinated, and projects have to move from an idea to something people can actually use.
13. Genesys Works Bay Area
Location: Corporate partner offices in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA
Cost: None. Interns are paid
Dates: Eight weeks of summer training followed by a year-long internship during senior year
Application Deadline: Rolling via partner high schools
Eligibility: High school seniors from underserved communities
Genesys Works Bay Area provides an initial eight-week business technology training program followed by a paid, year-long corporate internship. You work directly inside a partner company to perform tasks related to business operations, information technology, and corporate administration. The program places you in an office environment where you engage with corporate workflows and learn the administrative systems that keep companies functioning. You receive coaching on workplace communication, career planning, and corporate expectations while earning wages for your work in the business sector.
14. SFPUC SSIP CityWorks
Location: San Francisco Public Utilities Commission offices and private partner firms, San Francisco, CA
Cost: None. Interns are paid
Dates: Summer internship program
Application Deadline: Varies by annual cohort
Eligibility: High school students from San Francisco's southeast neighborhoods; starting after junior year
The SSIP CityWorks program provides paid summer internships inside the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and its private engineering partner firms. You are exposed to the corporate and administrative side of municipal operations by working in fields such as finance, human resources, communications, and information technology. The program assigns you to a specific department where you complete office tasks, assist with organizational data, and observe how a public utility manages its business functions and budgets. You also work with supervisors and mentors who guide you through the professional expectations of a corporate workplace.
15. EBMUD High School Summer Internship (HSSI) Program
Location: East Bay Municipal Utility District offices, Bay Area, CA
Cost: None. Interns receive a paid stipend
Dates: Six weeks from mid-June through August; 16 hours per week
Application Deadline: Varies; currently uses a referral model from partner organizations
Eligibility: High school students in the EBMUD service area; referred by a partner organization
The EBMUD High School Summer Internship program places students inside a municipal utility organization to learn about its operational and administrative frameworks. You work on projects that support the daily operations of the district and gain exposure to the business functions required to manage regional services. The program includes career exploration sessions and direct mentorship from staff members. You complete office and organizational tasks that demonstrate how public utility businesses maintain their operations, manage resources, and plan for infrastructure needs.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Are there paid business internships for high school students in the Bay Area?
Yes. Nearly all internships on this list are paid, including CLA, Meta Summer Academy, KP Launch, and several San Francisco city department programs like SF YouthWorks and Project Pull.
2. Is there an option that doesn't require Bay Area residency?
Young Founders Lab is fully virtual and open to all high school students nationwide, unlike most internships on this list, which require San Francisco or specific Bay Area residency. It lets you build a real revenue-generating startup with mentorship from professionals at Google, Microsoft, and X.
3. Which internships are restricted to specific San Francisco neighborhoods or districts?
Meta Summer Academy is limited to residents of East Palo Alto, Belle Haven, or Redwood City, and SFPUC SSIP CityWorks is specifically for students from San Francisco's southeast neighborhoods.