Founding Engineering Intern

AI & Coding Intern — PotionLabs
Paid internship · Park Street, Kolkata · 3 months
About PotionLabs
PotionLabs is an AI solutions company. We build AI-native systems that run the operational core of a business. We don't build another dashboard on top of it.
We sit on top of the system a customer already has, and their books stay in Tally or SAP. Our first product, the AI Intelligence Workforce, is live in production at JD Jones & Co., a manufacturer that is about 100 years old. We are now building the headless kernel. This is the engine that reads a new customer's business and turns it into working software.
Manufacturing is our proving ground, not our limit.
Role snapshot
LocationPark Street, Kolkata (in person)Duration3 monthsStart dateImmediateStipend₹12,000–15,000 per month (paid internship)HoursMon–Fri 10 AM–6 PM, Sat 10 AM–2 PMOpeningsMultiple
What you'll do
You will find the manual work inside a real business, then automate it. You will work on real production systems from week one, not a sandbox.
1. Find and automate manual work
Sit with operations, sales and factory teams and watch how work really gets done.
Find the manual, repeated or slow steps.
Build AI-driven tools that remove them.
2. Turn real businesses into working software
Take a company's registers, spreadsheets and paper forms, and turn them into clear, structured data.
Prove the new system matches the old one, row by row.
Handle messy real data: blank rows, zero quantities, entries dated back, numbers written as 1,00,000.
3. Build and ship
Build internal tools, scripts and backend systems.
Work with APIs, databases and background jobs.
Write most of your code with AI coding tools, and check everything they write before you trust it.
4. Work with the team
Turn a business problem into a technical solution that people can understand.
Explain what you built to non-engineers in plain words.
Who we're looking for
Work experience is not required. Student, dropout or self-taught are all welcome.
Must have
Hands-on use of an AI coding tool, such as Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot or Codex. You use it often and you can show what you built with it.
At least one real project you can show us. This can be code, a live link or a system you built. Small is fine if it is real.
Working Python.
Basic SQL. You can write a query that totals sales per customer for last month.
Curiosity and ownership. You find problems yourself and follow them through.
Honesty about your work. You tell us clearly which parts you built, which parts a teammate built, and which parts an AI tool wrote.
Nice to have
Backend experience: APIs, databases, server-side logic.
Background jobs: queues, retries, and jobs that are safe to run twice.
An AI agent that takes real actions, such as calling tools or acting on data, not only a chat window.
Systems driven by config or rules files, not hardcoded one-off logic.
What doesn't matter
Degree, college or CGPA.
How many certificates you have.
What we're not looking for
Chatbot-only projects with no backend behind them.
Simple websites with little technical depth.
Tutorial projects presented as products.
Numbers on your CV that you can't explain.
What you'll get
A paid internship with real work from day one.
Real industrial problems in manufacturing, automation and AI.
Freedom to use the newest AI tools.
Direct work with the founder.
A full-time offer (pre-placement offer) for interns who do well.
How to apply
Apply with your work: a project, code or a system you built.
Fill in the pre-interview form. We don't interview candidates who skip it.
Apply at https://potionlabs.ai/careers/ai-coding-intern/
Employment and payroll are through JD Jones & Co. (P) Ltd, PotionLabs' sister company. Day-to-day work is with the PotionLabs team.

Work arrangement
No