Top 10 Tech Apprenticeships, Internships and Entry-Level Jobs in Bellevue, WA in 2026

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Bellevue’s 2026 tech market
• Amazon Technical Academy
• Nucamp Tech and AI Bootcamps
• Microsoft Leap Apprenticeship
• Amazon University Internships (Bellevue)
• Microsoft University Internship
• Google Apprenticeships
• Year Up (Bellevue/Seattle)
• Visa Software Engineering Apprenticeship
• Eastside AI Startup Internships
• Entry-Level SDE I and ML Roles in Bellevue
• How to choose your path in Bellevue’s AI job market
• Frequently Asked Questions

Amazon Technical Academy

Among the big Bellevue stalls, Amazon Technical Academy is the one quietly advertising “software engineer, no CS degree required” on its chalkboard. It’s Amazon’s internal-to-external apprenticeship designed to turn nontraditional candidates into full-fledged Software Development Engineer I (SDE I) hires, with a curriculum anchored in Java-based backend work, AWS services, and production engineering habits like code reviews and on-call readiness. For Bellevue candidates, that means a direct on-ramp into the same buildings and codebases as traditional new grads - without needing a four-year CS path.

Compensation, structure, and timing

ATA is structured more like a season than a single class: you move from intensive training into real team work. Once you reach the apprentice engineer phase, compensation data summarized by ZipRecruiter’s Amazon Technical Academy salary estimates puts average total pay around $152,287 per year, roughly $73 per hour. Admissions run on a rolling basis, with internal Amazon employees often seeing cohort postings a few months before external candidates, and the whole experience typically spans about 9 months of intensive training followed by team placement on an SDE I track.

Who thrives in Amazon Technical Academy

ATA is built for serious career changers and nontraditional candidates who already have some programming under their belt - bootcamp grads, self-taught developers, data analysts who picked up Python on the job. You’re a strong fit if you can handle a high-pressure, full-time learning environment; are comfortable thinking in data structures and algorithms; and ultimately want to specialize in backend and cloud engineering. From a Bellevue perspective, ATA is especially compelling if you see yourself later migrating onto AWS infrastructure or AI-platform teams, since a solid grounding in Java, distributed systems, and AWS primitives is exactly what those groups lean on.

Competitiveness and how to stand out from Bellevue

In terms of selectivity, ATA behaves more like a competitive grad program than a casual course. Amazon doesn’t publish acceptance rates, but based on the broader tech apprenticeship market, aiming for a low single-digit percentage is realistic. You can expect online coding and reasoning assessments, then an interview loop that looks a lot like an SDE I process - behavioral questions plus LeetCode-style problems at the easy-to-medium level. To stand out, your GitHub should prove you can ship and maintain backend systems: a deployed REST API with authentication and a real SQL database, an analytics or recommendation pipeline that processes nontrivial data, unit tests and logging wired up, and at least basic AWS familiarity (IAM, S3, CloudWatch). Reviewers are effectively looking at your portfolio on a mental scale, weighing immediate engineering readiness against your long-term upside inside Amazon’s ecosystem.

The payoff is that if you land a Bellevue ATA cohort and perform well, you’re not just “breaking into tech” - you’re stepping into the same SDE I compensation bands and code ownership as traditional new grads, with experience directly relevant to AI infrastructure, data engineering, and ML platform roles across Amazon’s teams.

Nucamp Tech and AI Bootcamps

For a lot of Bellevue career changers, the bottleneck isn’t motivation - it’s money and time. You can see the gleaming big-tech stalls across the lake, but dropping ten or twenty grand on a full-time bootcamp while you’re still paying rent near downtown just doesn’t fit in the tote bag. That’s where Nucamp sits in this market: not a stall that hands you a full-time job, but the one selling the flour, sugar, and spices so you can actually bake something worth showing to Amazon Technical Academy, Microsoft Leap, or a local AI startup.

How Nucamp fits Bellevue’s market

Nucamp runs online, community-based bootcamps with live workshops connected to learners in more than 200 U.S. cities, including the Seattle-Bellevue corridor. The headline is cost and flexibility: core tech and AI programs range from about $2,124 to $3,980, compared with the five-figure tuition that many competitors charge for similar content. That price point matters in a region where you might already be commuting to Redmond or South Lake Union, trying to upskill without walking away from your current paycheck.

For aspiring AI and backend engineers, three programs line up especially well with Bellevue apprenticeships and junior roles. The Back End, SQL and DevOps with Python bootcamp runs 16 weeks at $2,124, focused on Python, SQL, DevOps, and cloud deployment - the same stack that underpins a lot of AI and data work. The Solo AI Tech Entrepreneur bootcamp stretches over 25 weeks at $3,980, and is explicitly about building AI-powered products, from LLM integration and AI agents to SaaS monetization. AI Essentials for Work is a 15-week path at $3,582 that targets working professionals who want to bring practical AI, prompt engineering, and tools like ChatGPT into their current roles.

Pricing, outcomes, and what you actually get

Across the catalog, Nucamp’s tuition spans from a 4-week Web Development Fundamentals course at $458 to a Complete Software Engineering Path lasting 11 months at $5,644, with intermediate options like the 17-week Front End Web and Mobile Development and the 22-week Full Stack Web and Mobile Development bootcamps, each around $2,124 to $2,604. Monthly payment plans smooth the hit, which is critical if you’re already budgeting for Eastside rent and transit. Outcomes data compiled from Course Report and Trustpilot show an employment rate around 78%, a graduation rate near 75%, and an overall Trustpilot rating of 4.5 out of 5 across roughly 398 reviews, with about 80% of those being five-star ratings.

Those numbers don’t guarantee anything, but they do matter when you put them on the mental scale next to cost and time. In exchange for that investment, you get structured weekly content, community-based learning with live workshops, and career services like 1:1 coaching, portfolio support, mock interviews, and access to a job board that overlaps with employers and apprenticeship providers highlighted in BestColleges’ analysis of companies offering tech and coding apprenticeships. The practical output, if you use the time well, is 2-3 solid projects: maybe a Python and SQL backend with CI/CD, or an AI-powered app that calls an LLM and ships to the cloud - exactly the kind of artifacts you want in your tote bag before you walk up to higher-stakes stalls like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, or an Eastside AI startup.

Using Nucamp as a force multiplier for Bellevue opportunities

In a city where internships at Amazon and Microsoft, apprenticeships like Leap or ATA, and even Year Up and Per Scholas cohorts are all competing for space in your schedule, Nucamp works best as an accelerator rather than a destination. You keep your current job, spend evenings and weekends turning tutorials into working software, and come out with code you can show on GitHub and in interviews. That makes it much easier to “taste” multiple pathways - apply to a couple of apprenticeships, try a hackathon with an AI project, talk to recruiters - without overloading your single tote bag. For Bellevue-based readers who are serious about AI and software but can’t afford to go all-in on a full-time program, that combination of price, structure, and portfolio output is what makes Nucamp a stall worth stopping at early in your career market run.

Microsoft Leap Apprenticeship

Some stalls at the Bellevue market are piled high with bulk fruit; others only bring a few crates of a rare variety and sell out by noon. Microsoft Leap sits firmly in that second group. It’s a tightly scoped, intensely competitive apprenticeship that’s explicitly designed for nontraditional candidates - bootcamp grads, self-taught devs, veterans, and career changers - who want a direct line into engineering teams in Redmond and the broader Seattle-Bellevue corridor.

What the Leap season actually looks like

Leap runs as a structured 16-week season: about 4 weeks of classroom-style training followed by roughly 12 weeks embedded with a real product team. According to the official Microsoft Leap application process, cohorts commonly place apprentices into groups like Azure, Xbox, Bing, and other engineering orgs that increasingly touch AI platforms and Copilot-style features. For Bellevue residents, that typically means a commute over the bridge to Redmond a few days a week, working alongside full-time engineers on production code rather than toy exercises.

Pay, duration, and timing on the calendar

Compensation sits around $40 per hour, which works out to roughly $11,000-$15,000 total for the full 16 weeks depending on location and hours. It’s not long-term salary money, but it’s real income while you’re building experience that often carries the same résumé weight as a brand-name internship. Leap usually runs multiple cohorts each year, with starts in January and May; Microsoft notes that applications for a given start date generally open about 3-5 months in advance. In practice, that means treating Leap like a highly seasonal fruit: if you’re targeting a January cohort, you want your résumé, portfolio, and references ready by late summer or early fall.

Who Leap is really for

Leap shines for candidates who already know how to write code but haven’t yet convinced hiring managers to take a bet on them. That includes Nucamp or other bootcamp grads, self-taught Python or JavaScript developers, early-career IT folks wanting to jump into software, and people returning to tech after a break. As Oreate AI’s profile of Microsoft Leap puts it, the program is explicitly about “paving new paths in tech careers,” not just recycling the same CS-grad pipeline. For AI-focused readers on the Eastside, the value is in proximity: if you land on an Azure, data, or Copilot-adjacent team, you’re working on the platforms other AI products will build on.

Competitiveness and how to stack the scale in your favor

On the selectivity front, Leap is one of the most competitive tech apprenticeships in the market. Microsoft doesn’t publish admissions data, but industry watchers and alumni often describe acceptance rates in the single-digit percentages. The process typically includes résumé and portfolio screening, an online technical assessment, and multiple interviews covering both coding and behavioral topics. To look good under that scrutiny from a Bellevue perch, you want 2-3 substantial projects (ideally including at least one deployed to Azure), clear GitHub history, and stories that show you can learn fast in ambiguous environments. Think of Microsoft’s reviewers like the vendor at the stall, watching you load apples on the scale: they’re weighing your current technical level against your growth curve, communication skills, and how convincingly you can explain why you want to build here - on this side of the lake, on these specific teams - rather than treating Leap as just another line item on a generic list.

Amazon University Internships (Bellevue)

Summer internships at Amazon’s Bellevue and Seattle offices are the short, intense harvest season of the local tech calendar. For students in CS, data science, or related degrees, a single 12-week run on an SDE or AI/ML team can be the step that turns “maybe I’ll work in tech” into a concrete six-figure offer waiting before senior year is even over.

What these internships actually are

Amazon’s university internships in the Seattle-Bellevue metro span Software Development Engineer (SDE), Hardware Development Engineer, AI/ML engineering, and AWS-focused roles. Interns work on real product teams - everything from Prime Video recommendation systems to low-level improvements in AWS services - rather than isolated training projects. The city’s own economic development materials highlight Amazon as one of the core anchors of the local tech economy, and those teams in downtown Bellevue and across the lake routinely host summer interns on mission-critical code paths.

Compensation, duration, and the recruiting clock

For SDE and related roles in Bellevue, internship compensation typically lands around $8,000-$10,000 per month, often with additional housing support for eligible students. Most runs are about 12 weeks, centered on the summer term. Recruiting for those Summer 2026 seats starts early: many postings go live in late summer and early fall of the prior academic year, with the bulk of interviews happening between August and November.

Public compensation aggregators like 6figr’s breakdown of Amazon new-grad salaries in Bellevue put SDE I total comp in roughly the $171,000-$204,000 range, with base salaries around the mid-$100Ks and the rest in stock and bonuses. In Washington, the lack of state income tax means more of that internship and full-time pay actually lands in your account compared with similar offers in California or New York.

Conversion to full-time and why Bellevue is high leverage

Internships are not just a summer job at Amazon; they’re one of the main funnels into those SDE I offers. Historically, strong performers see return-offer rates well north of 70% in many teams, turning one good summer into an automatic landing spot after graduation. The upside of doing this in Bellevue specifically is that you’re already embedded in the region’s largest engineering hub, surrounded by other big-tech and AI players, with cost-of-living and tax dynamics that make a six-figure starting salary stretch further than it would in several rival markets.

How to stand out, especially if you care about AI/ML

On paper, Amazon’s internship hiring flow looks a lot like the full-time SDE process, just tuned to a student level. There are online assessments, data structures and algorithms interviews, and behavioral questions designed around the Leadership Principles. As one overview of the Amazon hiring process from JobTestPrep puts it, the bar is intentionally high and multi-stage:

“The Amazon recruitment process is very competitive and includes several steps: online application, online tests, phone interviews, and on-site interviews that assess both technical and behavioral competencies.” - JobTestPrep, Amazon Hiring Process Guide

For AI-minded candidates, that means preparing on two tracks. First, get your fundamentals in order: one or two solid projects in Java, Python, or C++, clean use of data structures, and comfort with debugging. Second, build at least one applied ML or data-heavy project you can talk about in depth - a movie or product recommender, a sentiment classifier, or a small LLM-powered tool wrapped in a web API. When you’re in front of an interviewer in Bellevue, they’re not just checking if you’ve passed the right classes; they’re weighing whether you can contribute to a real team in 12 weeks, earn a return offer, and come back ready to operate as a full SDE I in one of the most competitive - and rewarding - markets in tech.

Microsoft University Internship

On the other side of the lake from downtown Bellevue, Microsoft’s university internship program is the rival stall to Amazon’s: different flavors, same level of premium fruit. For CS and data science students, a 12-week stint on an Azure, Office, or Copilot team doesn’t just fill a summer; it can reframe your whole early career around cloud and AI platforms rather than individual apps.

Where interns land and what they actually do

Microsoft routes university interns into a mix of product groups: Azure (cloud infrastructure, data and ML services), Office and productivity (increasingly built around Copilot and AI features), Xbox and gaming, and various research and applied AI teams. Day to day, that can mean anything from wiring up telemetry in a distributed service to building UX around an AI-assisted workflow, to experimenting with new model-powered features in internal tools. For a Bellevue-based intern, the commute might be a bus or drive to Redmond, but the code you ship runs globally.

Pay, duration, and the hiring season

Compensation for Microsoft’s software engineering internships typically falls in the $7,500-$9,500 per month range, depending on your education level and role, with internships running about 12 weeks over the summer. Recruiting for those slots starts early: most university-facing hiring pushes happen in the early fall of the prior academic year, with September through November being the window when applications, assessments, and first-round interviews pile up.

Who this path serves best from Bellevue

These internships are especially well-suited to students who see themselves building the “roads and bridges” of AI rather than just riding on top of existing models. If you’re excited about distributed systems, developer tools, or productivity apps where AI quietly does the heavy lifting, Microsoft’s teams give you exposure to exactly that. Locally, competition is fierce: a quick scan of technology intern listings around Bellevue on LinkedIn shows dozens of roles from cloud, fintech, and AI companies all vying for the same pool of candidates. Having “Microsoft Software Engineering Intern” on your résumé can tilt that scale in your favor for years afterward.

Standing out as an AI-minded candidate

To make it through Microsoft’s process, you need more than a good GPA. At minimum, you want one or two substantial projects that touch the cloud: for example, a web app deployed on a cloud platform using serverless functions and a managed database, or a small tool that calls vision or language APIs to solve a concrete problem. For AI-leaning teams, add a Jupyter notebook that walks through data cleaning, model training, and evaluation, plus a thin API or UI that puts that model in front of users. In interviews, you’ll be judged on the usual algorithms and problem-solving, but also on how clearly you can talk about tradeoffs - latency versus accuracy, cost versus complexity - in the same way a vendor at the stall talks through different varieties of apples. From Bellevue, where you can literally see the Redmond skyline on a clear day, that mix of platform depth and AI exposure makes this internship one of the most strategically valuable short seasons you can spend in tech.

Google Apprenticeships

Compared with short, intense programs like Microsoft Leap, Google’s apprenticeships feel more like planting a perennial in your career garden: they run longer, grow steadily, and can leave you with deep roots in one of the world’s most recognizable tech brands. For Bellevue candidates who don’t have a four-year CS degree but can already write some code or wrangle data, these 12-24 month roles are a way to get full-time pay and hands-on experience while you’re still leveling up.

Compensation, duration, and application timing

Across tracks like Data Analytics, UX Design, IT Support, and Software Application Development, U.S. apprentices typically earn around $25-$30 per hour, with some programs reaching roughly $62,000 per year depending on location and level. Most run between 12 and 24 months in a hybrid format, mixing classroom-style training with embedded team work. Listings such as the Data Analytics Apprenticeship with a March 2026 start date on the AnitaB.org job board show a predictable cadence: applications generally open around September for a March start, with final decisions landing close to the cohort launch.

Who Google apprenticeships serve best

These programs are explicitly aimed at people who’ve taken alternative routes into tech: community college students, bootcamp graduates, self-taught developers, and early-career professionals switching out of retail, hospitality, or other non-tech roles. From a Bellevue vantage point, they’re especially interesting if you’re already working somewhere on the Eastside and can’t drop everything for a full-time degree program. For AI- and data-minded readers, the Data Analytics and Software Application Development tracks tend to be the best fit, giving you structured time with SQL, dashboards, and web stacks that later translate into junior data engineer, BI, or ML-adjacent roles in the broader Seattle-Bellevue ecosystem.

Competitiveness and standing out from Bellevue

Google brands these roles as highly competitive, and resources like Rawan Isola Osobu’s overview on Google apprenticeships and their selection process emphasize just how multi-stage the journey is: application and résumé screening, online assessments, and then technical and behavioral interviews. Acceptance rates aren’t published, but between global demand and limited seats, planning for single-digit percentages is realistic. To stack the scale in your favor from Bellevue, treat your portfolio like a set of labeled crates: for Data Analytics, that means at least one substantial SQL project on a real dataset plus a clear dashboard that tells a business story; for Software Application Development, it’s two or three well-documented repositories, one of which should integrate an external API or even a simple ML or LLM service into a deployed web app.

Because these apprenticeships can last up to two years, you also need to think in seasons, not just sprints. Start building projects and practicing interviews 9-12 months before the cohort you want, and be ready to keep learning while you’re in the role - Google explicitly encourages apprentices to apply for full-time positions during the final months of the program. If you’re based in Bellevue, that combination of extended runway, a global brand on your résumé, and practical skills in data or software can make you significantly more competitive for both big-tech and AI startup roles across the Seattle-Bellevue market once your apprenticeship wraps.

Year Up (Bellevue/Seattle)

Not every path into Bellevue tech starts with a big logo on your badge. Year Up feels more like the city-sponsored stand at the market: built for access, focused on fundamentals, and very intentional about who it serves. In the Puget Sound region, Year Up offers young adults a structured, one-year route from “curious about tech” to paid roles in IT support, cybersecurity, software development, and business operations.

How Year Up is structured in Bellevue/Seattle

Year Up Puget Sound is aimed at adults 18-29, especially those from underrepresented or low-income backgrounds. The program runs about one year, split into roughly 6 months of technical and professional skills training followed by 6 months of a full-time internship with a local employer. During the training phase, students receive a weekly stipend - typically in the $200-$600 range - then move into a paid internship with partners across the Seattle-Bellevue area. Tracks often include IT support, cybersecurity, software development, and business analytics, giving you practical experience in roles that are in steady demand around the Eastside.

Outcomes, cost, and why it matters locally

The standout metric for Year Up is its outcome rate: about 80% of graduates are employed or in school full-time within four months of completing the program. Tuition is covered through a mix of philanthropy and corporate partnerships, so program participants don’t pay out of pocket. In a high-cost region like Bellevue - where entry-level IT roles can pay anywhere from just under $23/hour up to nearly $50/hour - that combination of no tuition, a stipend, and a strong placement record is hard to match. The model aligns closely with how federally registered tech apprenticeships are described on Apprenticeship.gov: earn while you learn, with structured training and a direct link to employers.

Per Scholas and the employer pipeline

In the Seattle-Bellevue area, Year Up often intersects with Per Scholas, a nonprofit training provider that runs 12-15 week no-tuition, full-time courses in IT Support, AWS Cloud, and Cybersecurity. While Per Scholas training itself is unpaid, it’s built to lead directly to entry-level roles and certifications, and it connects graduates with hiring partners ranging from big tech to major staffing firms. One of those partners, TEKsystems, is a frequent landing spot for early-career IT and cloud talent; local employees on Indeed describe TEKsystems in Bellevue as having “a strong sense of community and culture” and recruiters who “genuinely want what is best for their employees,” according to employee reviews on Indeed.

“There is a strong sense of community and culture… I truly felt like they wanted what was best for me and my career.” - Employee review, TEKsystems Bellevue (via Indeed)

For Bellevue readers juggling rent, family obligations, and maybe a non-tech day job, Year Up plus programs like Per Scholas offer a realistic way to get that first paid foothold in IT or junior software roles without taking on debt. You’re not walking straight into a six-figure SDE I position, but you are filling your tote bag with something just as valuable at this stage: an income-backed training period, a local internship on your résumé, and a network that reaches into the same companies - Amazon, Microsoft, regional employers - that dominate the chalkboard signs across the Seattle-Bellevue tech market.

Visa Software Engineering Apprenticeship

When you think about fintech roles in Bellevue, Visa’s Software Engineering Apprenticeship is the stall that offers both a short, intensive tasting and a full season of work. Branded as the Apprentice - Senior Support Software Engineer, it’s a structured path that starts with a classroom-style bootcamp and flows into a year of on-the-job training inside a global payments company, all from a Bellevue base.

Program structure: bootcamp plus on-the-job year

The apprenticeship is split into two phases. First is a 15-week remote training bootcamp focused on software engineering fundamentals and production support skills. That’s followed by approximately 12 months of on-the-job training as an apprentice engineer embedded with Visa teams. The role is hybrid during the OJT phase, typically requiring about three days per week in the Bellevue office, where you work alongside full-time engineers on real systems that process payments and transactions at scale.

Compensation, benefits, and basic requirements

Unlike unpaid training programs, Visa pays from day one. During the 15-week bootcamp, apprentices receive around $47,923 in total compensation. Upon successful completion and transition into the full apprenticeship year, salary can rise to roughly $73,000 per year, along with corporate benefits such as medical, dental, and vision coverage, 401(k), and paid time off. The official job listing on Visa’s SmartRecruiters posting emphasizes that this is a hybrid role and calls out the need for a dedicated workspace and your own capable computer (Windows 10 or macOS 10 with at least 8GB RAM) for the remote training portion.

Eligibility is intentionally broad but comes with a few key constraints. Candidates must be at least 18, legally authorized to work in the U.S. without sponsorship, and local enough to commute to the Bellevue office during the hybrid OJT phase. The program is aimed at people who have not completed a traditional degree in a closely related technical field, which makes it a viable option if you’re coming from another discipline or from non-degree training like bootcamps.

Who this apprenticeship serves and how to prepare

This path is particularly suited to Bellevue-area career changers who want a structured way into backend or support engineering without a CS degree, and who are comfortable committing to roughly 15 weeks of full-time remote study followed by a year of hybrid work. Technically, you’ll want to show solid fundamentals in at least one programming language (often Java, C#, or Python), basic understanding of APIs and HTTP, familiarity with relational databases and SQL, and an ability to debug and communicate clearly about your process. A strong portfolio project might simulate an e-commerce or payments workflow with robust error handling and logging, echoing the reliability demands of real fintech systems.

On the professional side, Visa stresses “entry-level technical and professional skills,” so evidence of teamwork, documentation, and reliability counts heavily alongside raw coding ability. Compared to shorter apprenticeships or unpaid training, this program asks more upfront time but offers a longer, better-supported runway inside a single company. For the right Bellevue candidate, it can be a way to convert one focused year of learning and contribution into a sustainable software career in the region’s growing fintech and AI-adjacent ecosystem.

Eastside AI Startup Internships

Walk a few blocks from the glass towers in downtown Bellevue and you start to hit smaller offices with names you won’t see on billboards yet: AI logistics platforms, LLM tooling startups, data infrastructure companies. That’s where Eastside AI startup internships sit in this market - scrappier stalls that may not match big-tech brand recognition, but will absolutely hand you the knife and ask you to start slicing apples on day one.

What these internships usually look like

Most AI-focused startups around Bellevue and the broader Eastside hire interns for software, data, and ML roles on a rolling basis. Postings compiled in community-curated lists like the Summer 2026 tech internships tracker on GitHub and local job boards show a pattern: pay typically lands around $25-$50 per hour, durations run 3-6 months, and many internships start outside the traditional summer window. You’ll often be the only intern - or one of a handful - working directly with founders or staff engineers on live features, data pipelines, or LLM integrations that ship to paying customers.

Who thrives in Eastside AI startup roles

These internships are a strong match if you care more about breadth and velocity than perfect structure. You’ll do well if you’re comfortable with ambiguity, can teach yourself new tools quickly, and like the idea of touching product, data, and infra in the same week. In practice, that might mean wiring a logging pipeline on Monday, fine-tuning a small model on Wednesday, and jumping into a customer call on Friday to understand why a feature isn’t landing. For Bellevue-based students and career changers who already have one traditional experience (like a corporate internship or apprenticeship), a startup stint can round out your profile with hard stories about owning v1 features and making tradeoffs under pressure.

How to get noticed by AI startups on the Eastside

Unlike Amazon or Microsoft, many startups never post a formal “software engineer intern” role. Instead, they respond to specific, relevant outreach. The most reliable play is project-first: build something obviously related to their product - an internal tool for managing prompts if they work with LLMs, a small route optimizer if they do logistics, a dashboard for one of their public data sources - and share a short demo video along with the repo. Pair that with a concise email to a founder or engineering lead that explains what you built, why you care about their space, and how you could add value in 3-4 months.

Because these teams are small, they weigh your signal differently than a big company would: clear, working code; evidence that you can learn independently; and signs that you won’t need hand-holding to be productive. If you’ve already spent time in structured programs - bootcamps, apprenticeships, or university courses - an AI startup internship can be the place where you test that training in the wild, turning all the abstract skills you’ve collected across the Seattle-Bellevue market into concrete, founder-level impact.

Entry-Level SDE I and ML Roles in Bellevue

All the apprenticeships, internships, and bootcamps in this list are samples; the thing you’re ultimately trying to carry home in your tote bag is a full-time role. In Bellevue, that usually means an entry-level Software Development Engineer I (SDE I), junior or associate Machine Learning Engineer, or an IT/Cloud support role that’s close enough to engineering that you can step sideways later. These jobs are where you stop rehearsing and start owning production code, on-call rotations, and features that real customers can’t ignore.

Compensation and why Bellevue is high leverage

For SDE I at Amazon’s Bellevue offices, market data puts total compensation commonly in the $171,000-$204,000 range, with base salaries often around $166,000 and some offers landing near $214,000 total when you include stock and bonuses. Other local entry-level software roles, like Software Engineer I at Flexport, come in around $125,045-$156,307, while junior Machine Learning Engineer positions at firms such as Adisys Corporation are estimated between roughly $117,000 and $170,000. On the IT side, entry-level Support Analyst roles around Bellevue frequently pay about $22.93-$49.52 per hour, giving you a viable starting point if you’re coming from Year Up, Per Scholas, or a helpdesk track. An analysis of Amazon’s evolving performance-based salary structure by TechGig’s compensation coverage underscores how much long-term upside is tied to consistent performance once you’re inside, and in Washington, all of that lands in a state with no state income tax, which meaningfully boosts your take-home compared with similar headline numbers in California or New York.

Competitiveness and what hiring managers actually weigh

These roles are more competitive than they were a few years ago: you’re now stacked against CS grads, bootcamp alumni, self-taught devs, and early-career transfers from IT and data roles. A quick look at entry-level software engineer openings in Bellevue on Glassdoor shows multi-stage interview processes as the norm, usually including data-structures-and-algorithms rounds, basic system-design questions at a junior level, and behavioral interviews that probe how you handle ambiguity and feedback. For ML roles, add in expectations around Python, libraries like NumPy and PyTorch, and an ability to explain metrics and tradeoffs (accuracy, latency, cost) like you’re talking through weights on that vendor’s scale. Hiring managers are not just checking whether you can pass a coding test; they’re weighing internships or apprenticeships, project depth, communication, and whether your trajectory suggests you’ll grow into mid-level IC work within a few review cycles.

Connecting the dots from internships and apprenticeships

From a planning standpoint, everything earlier in this list is a runway to these jobs. Amazon Technical Academy or Microsoft Leap plus strong performance can convert directly into SDE I offers. A path like Nucamp → Google or Visa apprenticeship → 1-2 years of real-world experience often lines you up for software or ML roles at both big tech and startups. Year Up, Per Scholas, and IT support roles give you an income-backed route into the ecosystem; from there you can climb into cloud, DevOps, and eventually ML infrastructure by stacking certs and projects. The key is to treat each step as something you deliberately put in your tote bag, not as random fruit you grabbed because it was nearby: every project, cohort, and internship should point toward being the kind of engineer who can walk into a Bellevue interview, talk lucidly about systems and tradeoffs, and convince a skeptical hiring panel that you’re ready to own real pieces of the stack.

How to choose your path in Bellevue’s AI job market

By now you’ve walked past a lot of stalls in Bellevue’s tech market: big, shiny ones with name-brand logos and smaller tables stacked with AI side projects and apprenticeships. The point isn’t to grab a little from each until your tote bag splits; it’s to decide what you’re actually optimizing for. Just like in ML, picking the wrong metric gives you the wrong “best” model, and picking someone else’s definition of success can send you into the wrong program at the wrong time.

Calibrate your own objective function

Before you chase any more chalkboard signs, get brutally clear on what you’re weighing on the scale. If you need income as fast as possible, you’ll value “time to first paid role” over pure brand prestige. If your north star is deep AI/ML work, you might trade a slightly slower financial start for roles that put you closer to data, models, and infra. Other dials include risk tolerance (startups vs. big tech), structure (bootcamps and apprenticeships vs. self-directed learning), and geography (how far you’re willing to commute around the Eastside). None of the options on this list dominate on every dimension; your job is to decide which dimensions matter most for the next two years of your life, not forever.

Match your starting point to the right stalls

Once you know what you’re optimizing for, your current starting point matters more than your dream endpoint. A Bellevue College student with a couple of CS classes, a retail worker retraining at night, and an IT support analyst eyeing ML all need different mixes of apprenticeships, internships, and training. The art is in picking only as many as fit in your tote bag at once so you can do them well.

1. If you’re a student, prioritize high-conversion internships and a small number of ambitious projects. Use campus resources and local meetups to get in front of recruiters early.
2. If you’re a career changer, build skills and proof first (bootcamps, community college, self-study), then target apprenticeships and structured programs that pay while you learn.
3. If you’re already close to job-ready, focus your energy on a tight set of applications to full-time roles and 1-2 “stretch” opportunities that move you closer to AI/ML work.

Turn it into a 12-24 month plan

Thinking in seasons, not weeks, keeps you from overcommitting. A realistic plan might combine one formal learning track (like a bootcamp or courses at Bellevue College’s tech and CS programs), one or two serious projects you maintain over time, and one major application push per year (internships if you’re a student, apprenticeships or full-time roles if you’re not). Keep a running backlog of “tastes” you can sample with low risk - hackathons, short online challenges, informational interviews - so you’re always testing whether your current objective function still fits your life and the market.

As you refine, remember that Bellevue’s advantage isn’t just proximity to Amazon, Microsoft, and a dense AI startup scene; it’s that you can stack experiences here without leaving the ecosystem. An apprenticeship can flow into a cloud role, which can flow into ML infra, all within a few light-rail stops and under a tax structure that lets six-figure salaries go further. Use resources like the AWS technical apprenticeship listings on Amazon Careers as snapshots of what employers actually want, then adjust your projects and applications accordingly. Keep tasting, keep weighing tradeoffs on your own scale, and be intentional about what earns a spot in your tote bag - because that, more than any Top 10 list, is what will shape your AI career in Bellevue.

Frequently Asked Questions