I interned at Coinbase the summer before my senior year, class of 2025. Got a return offer. Accepted. Wanted to document what the whole arc looked like because when I was searching for this information before my internship, I found almost nothing.
The internship itself:
I was on a backend team working on a payments infrastructure project. The onboarding was genuinely good, I had a real project with a real scope, and my manager was honest about expectations. Not every internship is like that. I knew people at other companies who spent their summers building internal dashboards nobody would use. Mine shipped to production.
The project involved building a service that reconciled transaction states across multiple systems. It was harder than anything I'd done in coursework. The codebase was large and I had to navigate it without a lot of handholding. That was stressful at first but looking back, it prepared me for what full-time is actually like.
How conversion works:
Interns at Coinbase get evaluated by their host manager at the end of the summer. The criteria are basically: did you complete your project, did you work well with the team, and could you operate as a full-time hire. There's a formal review process and then a conversion decision comes from HR.
I got my return offer about 3 weeks before the internship ended. The number: base around $180k for a new grad SWE role in SF (L3 equivalent), RSUs at $120k over 4 years. Felt high to me at the time but I've since seen it called mid-range for a top-tier new grad offer.
What I'd tell other interns:
The project completion matters, but so does how you conduct yourself outside your direct deliverable. I asked questions in public channels, attended optional tech talks, got coffee with two senior engineers who weren't on my team. My manager mentioned those things in my review.
Also: ask for feedback explicitly at the midpoint, not just at the end. I didn't do this and I wish I had. There were things I could have adjusted in the back half.
I accepted the offer and start this fall. Nervous but ready.