Arista Networks Internships 2027: Programs, Pay and How to Apply

Arista Networks hires a small number of engineering interns each summer across software and hardware tracks, based mostly out of its Santa Clara headquarters. It's a selective, low-volume program compared to the big tech names, but interns get real ownership over code and hardware that ships to actual customer networks rather than a sandbox project.

Arista makes the switches and networking software that run some of the largest data centers in the world, so an internship there looks less like a typical consumer-tech summer and more like an infrastructure engineering job with a defined start and end date. If you want your work to touch production systems immediately, that's the pitch.

Internship tracks at Arista Networks

On the software side, interns work on code that goes through the same 20,000-plus automated test suite as everything else Arista ships, and past postings describe interns owning a project end to end rather than shadowing a full-time engineer. The hardware track covers high-speed Ethernet switch design, and past internships have had students design their own test boards, the kind that get used on the actual manufacturing line.

What Arista Networks actually does

Arista builds cloud networking hardware and software, most visibly high-speed Ethernet switches used by hyperscale data center operators, large enterprises and service providers. It's an infrastructure company, not a consumer-facing one, and its intern program reflects that: fewer interns, more direct exposure to the switches and software actually running customer networks.

Pay and program size

Arista doesn't publish an official intern pay rate. Self-reported numbers on sites like Levels.fyi and Glassdoor put software engineering intern pay somewhere in the high $20s to mid $50s an hour depending on level, team and location, though those figures come from individual submissions rather than a confirmed company rate. Community estimates also describe the intern class as small, in the dozens rather than the hundreds that large tech companies hire, which means fewer seats but proportionally more attention per intern.

How to apply

Arista lists a University category on its main careers page for student roles, and past cycles have pointed candidates toward sending a resume and transcript directly to a recruiting contact rather than relying only on a standard online application form. As of this guide's last update, ApplyBolt's live board shows open full-time engineering and sales roles at Arista but no 2027 internship posting yet; check the University careers page directly or set an alert, since a program this size can post and fill quickly once it opens.

If software engineering internships broadly are your focus rather than one specific company, our summer 2027 SWE internships guide covers how timing and pay compare across the industry, and our hardware engineering internships 2027 guide covers the track most relevant to Arista's hardware side specifically.

Arista vs a big-tech internship

A smaller company like Arista trades brand recognition for scope. Instead of one narrow feature on a massive codebase, interns commonly get a project with a defined start and end, and code that ships to production rather than sitting in a demo. If you're choosing between a huge name and a smaller, infrastructure-focused company, that difference in ownership is worth weighing against the resume value of a more famous logo, especially if networking or systems-level engineering is where you actually want to end up. For the full picture of how summer 2027 timing works across every industry, see our summer 2027 internships guide.