Software Engineer Internship

Tinder's mission is to connect people and foster meaningful relationships. The Ghent team focuses on "New Experiences," conceptualizing, testing, and building innovative features that enable new forms of discovery on top of the existing Tinder experience. This internship involves contributing to an experiment that embodies this vision, collaborating with a multidisciplinary Product, Design, Engineering & Analytics team to develop an innovative feature that helps users find people in new ways or create tools to facilitate this.

Must Have

• Develop an innovative feature that helps users find people in new ways and/or tools that enable this.
• Work in a mobile context (iOS or Android) or on the backend.
• Collaborate with a multidisciplinary Product, Design, Engineering & Analytics team.
• Deliver a Proof of Concept of the feature (working app-flow or backend-service).
• Conduct research & provide recommendations on architecture.
• Document the design (API schemas, wireframes, flowcharts).
• Give a final presentation to the team with lessons learned and a demo of the PoC.

Perks & Benefits

• Build for an app with millions of users worldwide.
• Work in an international, multidisciplinary team.
• Make an impact with state-of-the-art mobile & backend technologies.
• Go through the entire process: from idea to prototype to live test.
• Access to real methodologies used daily: user interviews, surveys, usability testing.

Tinder's mission is to bring people together and create meaningful relationships. For over 10 years, Tinder has been the place to meet new people. The new generations of daters think differently about relationships and are looking for more and new ways to connect and share experiences.

Our team in Ghent focuses on these New Experiences: we conceive, test, and build innovative features that enable new forms of discovery on top of the existing Tinder experience. During this internship, you will contribute to an experiment that makes this vision tangible.

The Assignment

Develop an innovative feature that helps users find people in a new way and/or tools that make this possible. For this, you will work together with our multidisciplinary Product, Design, Engineering & Analytics team.

You will work in a mobile context (iOS or Android), or on the backend that drives this feature. During an intake interview, we will jointly determine the precise scope of the assignment, tailored to your technical background and interests.

Possible Focus Areas

iOS / Android engineering:

• Building a prototype with SwiftUI (iOS) or Kotlin (Android).
• Integration with Tinder's existing design guidelines and animations.
• Researching push-notifications, in-app prompts, and micro-interactions.

Backend engineering:

• Designing an API.
• Storing and retrieving user-generated content.
• Experimenting with real-time notifications or event-driven architecture.
• Choosing and justifying the right database technology (relational, NoSQL, graph).

Expected Deliverables

• Proof of Concept of the feature (working app-flow or backend-service).
• Research & recommendation on architecture.
• Documentation of the design (API schemas, wireframes, flowcharts).
• Final presentation to the team with lessons learned and a demo of the PoC.

Technology Stack

• iOS: Swift, SwiftUI, UIKit
• Android: Kotlin, Jetpack Compose
• Backend: Typescript, Java
• Database: DynamoDB, ElasticSearch
• CI/CD: Docker, Kubernetes
• UX/UI: Figma, Tinder Design System

Working Method

• You will work in a multidisciplinary team with product, design, engineering, and analytics.
• Agile approach: weekly check-ins, demos, and quick feedback.
• Access to real methodologies we use daily: user interviews, surveys, usability testing.

What you will learn

• Building for an app with millions of users worldwide.
• Working in an international, multidisciplinary team.
• Making an impact with state-of-the-art mobile & backend technologies.
• Going through the entire process: from idea to prototype to live test.