AI-Ready Junior Developers: 10 Funded Internships for 2026

We're excited to announce 10 fully-funded tech internships for 2026. The first time ever, a NZ educator is providing AI-fluent software development talent to the tech sector – all thanks to Dev Academy's new AI Software Development Practicum launching 2026.

The AI Reality Gap

It’s clear, while everyone's talking about AI, most tech teams are still figuring out how to meaningfully integrate it into their development workflows. “It doesn’t write code well”, or “I have to fix every line of code”, principal engineers say. But some companies are getting massive gains from fully agentic AI + human developer teams.

From 90% success rates on one-shot new feature builds to automatically fixing ⅓ of bugs before they reach human hands, NZ tech is competing with the best of them.

At Dev Academy, our team has been building, testing, and refining AI-assisted development practices since ChatGPT launched in 2022. We provide full-stack software development training + the best AI workflows for planning, coding and reviewing code execution.

The AI Software Development Practicum

This practical experience forms the foundation of our new AI Software Development Practicum launching in 2026. The programme is never theory to immerse students in:

20 weeks of hands-on AI software development training
12 weeks of team-based projects built on live open source codebases
An 8-week paid internship with the best of NZ's tech companies

Funded Internships with Purpose

The 8-week internships are fully funded by Toi Mai, meaning tech employers get to work with AI-trained junior developers at zero cost. We're particularly focused on partnering with women-led and Māori-led tech businesses to strengthen diversity across our ecosystem. And we think it’s a model that can last–in future, industry-funded internships for the sector mean systems-level change in the talent pipeline.

What's In It For Your Team?

These aren't your typical junior developers. Graduates come equipped with:

Full-stack software development experience, from our core Bootcamp training
100+ hours on AI-assisted development workflows, thanks to the AI + coding training in AI Software Development Practicum
Fresh perspectives on how AI can enhance your existing processes
The skills to contribute to innovation projects from day one

Join the Programme

Too many of us are nervous about how to really make AI work in our businesses. This programme offers a practical pathway to test, experiment and grow talent, ready for the AI-augmented future.