Summer Intern 2026 Design and Strategy

McLean, MD - USA

Monthly Salary: Not Disclosed

Posted on: 16 hours ago

Vacancies: 1 Vacancy

Job Summary

Overview

Be an agent of change on a team committed to achieving client-focused mission-driven excellence. Steampunk is the explosive collision of customer-centered design and traditional government contracting. We are an employee-owned company with a startup mindset and time-tested approaches tailored for the federal government. Were passionate about creating solutions that are impactful practical and scalable while meeting our clients ever-changing needs. We believe in empowering our teams to find creative solutions to intractable problems. We believe the best environment in which to grow and thrive is outside our comfort zone. We believe that while good design makes for a good product customer-centered design makes for an excellent one.

Contributions

What youll do:

As a Design & Strategy intern you will learn about our Design Intelligence framework and how to incorporate customer-centered methods to deliver a quality experiences at speed. Your typical day may include:

Planning and conducting user research including user and stakeholder interviews facilitated workshops and co-creation sessions
Synthesizing research to develop artifacts like personas and journey maps
Developing and iterating on possible solutions through prototyping and wireframing
Planning and conducting user-testing sessions
Organizing your work in Agile sprints and attending daily stand ups to coordinate with project manager and/or design lead
Preparing artifacts and deliverables for presentations and feedback sessions

What youll learn:

Participatory design methods to understand customer needs and articulate problems and pain points
How to iterate and improve on ideas and processes
How to plan your work in an efficient and agile way
How to collaborate across different team roles and functions
How to articulate design decisions and present your work to stakeholders

What youll experience:

A work culture like no other where design is valued and at the center of everything we do
An exciting and collaborative studio environment
Direct mentorship from leadership
Exposure to various disciplines both in design and other core technical capabilities
Group social events that promote networking relationship building comradery and service

Qualifications

Qualifications:

This internship is in person; you must be able to work from our Design Intelligence studio in Tysons Corner Virginia at least 3 days/week
Rising third year student or above with a concentration in UX Design User Interface/Interaction Design Product Design Service Design Organizational Change or Instructional Design
Critical thinking skills a collaborative nature and a curiosity for solving complex problems
Local to the DMV area

About steampunk

Identity Statement

As part of the application process you are expected to be on camera during interviews and assessments. We reserve the right to take your picture to verify your identity and prevent fraud.

Steampunkis aChange Agentin the Federal contracting industry bringing new thinking to clients in the Homeland Federal Civilian Health and DoD sectors. Through ourHuman-Centered delivery methodology we are fundamentally changing the expectations our Federal clients have for true shared accountability in solving their toughest mission challenges. As anemployee owned company we focus on investing in our employees to enable them to do the greatest work of their careers and rewarding them for outstanding contributions to our growth. If you want to learn more about our story visit.

We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race color religion sex national origin disability status protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by participates in the E-Verify program.

Required Experience:

Intern

OverviewBe an agent of change on a team committed to achieving client-focused mission-driven excellence. Steampunk is the explosive collision of customer-centered design and traditional government contracting. We are an employee-owned company with a startup mindset and time-tested approaches tailore...