Break Through Tech fellows are undergraduate students pursuing pathways into technical careers. They come from colleges and universities across the country and are often early in their academic and professional journeys. 

These students are highly motivated to build the project experience, professional confidence, and industry network needed to compete for future internships and full-time roles. Many are looking for their first meaningful exposure to how technical work happens inside a company. 

Fellows participate in Sprinternship™ as part of Break Through Tech’s broader mission to change the path to power and influence in a tech-enabled world by launching a new generation of tech talent into the ecosystem. They bring curiosity, collaboration, persistence, and a strong desire to learn from industry professionals. 

Because the Sprinternship™ is designed for early undergraduate students, projects should be practical, guided, and appropriately scoped. Fellows are not expected to perform like experienced interns or full-time employees. The goal is to give them a structured, paid professional experience that builds confidence, expands opportunity, and helps them take the next step toward a tech career.

Through the Sprinternship™ experience, fellows will: 

A Sprinternship™ is a short, full-time, paid micro-internship experience designed to help early undergraduate students gain meaningful exposure to technical work, professional environments, and career pathways in tech. 

Over the course of approximately three weeks, fellows work in teams of five on a company-defined technical project during an academic recess period. The experience is designed to function like a focused sprint inside a company, giving students the opportunity to contribute to a real project while building the confidence, skills, network, and resume experience needed to compete for future internships and early-career roles. 

Industry partners provide a meaningful technical challenge, assign a project lead or mentor, pay participating students directly, and guide fellows through the experience with structured touchpoints. Projects should be scoped to be achievable within a short, intensive sprint while still reflecting authentic work a technology, data, product, innovation, or engineering team might explore. 

Sprinternship™ projects may include technical research, data analysis, software prototyping, product discovery, workflow improvement, AI tool exploration, user research, quality assurance, or other project-based technical work appropriate for early undergraduate fellows. 

This format helps companies expand access to opportunity in tech while building early relationships with motivated undergraduate talent. For fellows, the Sprinternship™ provides “resume gold”: a real company experience that can dramatically improve their ability to pursue future internships and full-time roles.

Partnering with Break Through Tech through a Sprinternship™ gives companies a high-impact way to support emerging tech talent while creating meaningful value for internal teams. 

Industry partners benefit through: 

Industry partners may host fellows on-site, hybrid, or fully remotely depending on the structure of the Sprinternship™ opportunity and the needs of the host organization. For on-site or hybrid opportunities, partners should be prepared to provide a welcoming professional environment, clear instructions, and appropriate support for early undergraduate fellows.

Participating organizations should be prepared to: 

Projects should prioritize learning, exposure, career confidence, and authentic technical engagement while remaining achievable within a three-week sprint.