Software Engineer Intern Review

Item: Software Engineer Intern at Visa
Rating: 3.5
Author: Anonymous

at Visa

Internship (1 Month+)

Software Engineering

Paddington, Greater London

Review Submitted: August 2025

Overall Rating

3.5 /5

The Overall Rating is the average of all the ratings given in each category. We take those individual ratings and combine them into one final score!

3/5 - Overview of Role

4/5 - Skills Development

4/5 - Support and Guidance

2.8/5 - Company Culture

3.5/5 - Overall Experience

4/5 - Future Career Prospects

Overview of Role

Please give an overview of your role and what this involves on a day-to-day basis.

My project during the role was to build an ai powered chatbot to help with the operational delivery of a new technology. This meant my daily activities ranged from research and design to implementation, alongside participating in meetings and reviews with the more senior members of the team.

Were you given much responsibility during your placement / internship?

My project was solely my responsibility, and while not directly involved in my team's day-to-day work it would have value to the organisation as a means of integrating a new technology into the organisations workflow.

Please rate how meaningful the work you were doing was

3/5

Skills Development

Have you learnt any new skills, or developed your existing skills?

Overall, I feel like my soft skills became the most developed throughout the internship, and understanding how to navigate a highly regulated corporate environment such as Visa. My technical skills improved too, but more in line with aspects of design, using and understanding architecture patterns, and have a better grasp on more professional development practices like deployment and staging.

How would you rate the training provided during your experience?

4/5

How would you rate your development of industry-specific skills during the experience?

4/5

How would you rate your development of personal / soft skills during the experience?

4/5

Please rate how these skills have helped you in your career development

4/5

Support and Guidance

How much support and guidance did you receive during your placement / internship?

I received regular support and advice primarily from my direct manager. They would always find time among their other duties to help me with anything I was stuck on, and made me feel like there were no stupid questions. However, with my particular project I feel that they did not provide guidance on the exact technical aspects of it (as AI is not their expertise), but provided me ample information and direction in terms of development methodologies, and general advice about creating software in a professional environment.

How would you rate the support and guidance from your line manager?

5/5

How would you rate the support and guidance from the wider team?

3/5

Company Culture

What was the company culture and general atmosphere like?

My team are very welcoming and receptive to me as an intern, although my team is all remote and very deep into a pre-existing project so it can be hard to find time to meet or discuss things one-on-one. In the office I feel while I did not have any explicitly negative experiences, the lack of opportunities or in person presence of my own team did hinder my ability to communicate with those I worked in the same space with.

How would you rate the inclusiveness of the culture?

4/5

How would you rate the social opportunities?

2/5

How would you rate the diversity initiatives?

2/5

How would you rate the charity, sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives?

3/5

Overall Experience

To what extent did you enjoy your placement / internship?

I enjoyed very much as a means to develop my weaker areas, that being navigating a corporate environment and gaining skills and knowledge pertinent to the enterprise development domain. However, I do feel my overall enjoyment could have been improved by social initiatives bespoke to the software cohort.

Please rate your level of enjoyment on your placement / internship

4/5

Please rate how your experience met your expectations

3/5

Recommendations & Advice

Would you recommend Visa to a friend?

Yes

What advice would you give to others applying to Visa

I suppose it is dependent on the team you are assigned to as this a very large company with many moving parts. I would say that for the interview process, they are looking more for good problem solving skills and the ability to properly elucidate your process rather than hard programming skills (although you must have these to a certain level). Whilst on the job be prepared to be faced with many blockers imposed by the internal bureaucracy and regulations, as this slowed down the progress I felt I could make. Additionally, it seems those that are taken on as grads or new hires (or at least those I spoke to) take around 2 months to adjust to the systems and get all the prerequisites needed to complete their day-to-day duties without interruption.