5 Best Internship Email Templates & Examples for 2026

These steps apply whether you’re contacting a recruiter, professor, founder, or alumni working in AI, ML, or software engineering. The principles stay consistent across contexts.

Your email should usually be under 250 to 300 words and focused on one clear ask, such as a 15-minute call or consideration for a specific internship window. Be specific, for example “Summer 2026 MLOps internship” or “June to August 2026 availability for LLM evaluation tooling.”

1. Research the Company, Team, and Contact Person

Before writing, invest time in research. Understanding the company and team strongly affects how your message is received.

Where to research:

• Company website and blog for recent announcements

• LinkedIn for team structure and individual roles

• GitHub organization for open-source projects and technical focus

• Recent conference talks (NeurIPS 2025, ICML 2025) for research direction

• Product Hunt or tech news for recent launches

Who to target:

Rather than emailing a generic inbox like jobs@company.com, identify a specific person tied to the work you’re interested in. Look for titles such as Head of Machine Learning, Staff Backend Engineer, or Director of Data Science. Verify email formats using the company’s standard pattern, commonly first.last@company.com or first@company.com. Tools like Hunter.io or RocketReach can help confirm addresses.

Include one concrete detail per email. Reference an open-source repository, a recent feature launch, or a technical blog post. This signals genuine interest rather than mass outreach.

2. Write a Clear, Specific Subject Line

Your subject line determines whether your email gets opened. A vague subject like “Opportunity” or “Hello” will likely get ignored.

Best practices:

• Keep it to 6–10 words

• Include your intent plus timeline

• Add one credibility marker where possible

• Be specific enough to be forwarded internally

Strong subject line examples:

• “Summer 2026 ML Internship Inquiry – UC Berkeley CS”

• “Internship Inquiry – LLM Infra, June–Aug 2026”

• “Data Engineering Internship Interest – Referral from Dr. Lee”

• “Exploring AI Research Internship – Stanford MS Student”

Avoid generic subject lines that don’t clearly signal your purpose. Concise, descriptive subjects also help when recruiters forward your email to engineering managers, allowing them to quickly understand what you are asking for.

3. Open with a Professional Greeting

Your professional greeting sets the tone for everything that follows. The right choice depends on context and relationship.

For professors and formal contexts:

• “Dear Dr. [Last Name],” or “Dear Professor [Last Name],”

For recruiters:

• “Dear Ms. [Last Name],” or “Dear Mr. [Last Name],”

For startup founders and engineering leaders:

• “Hi [First Name],” is often acceptable and feels less stiff

Research pronouns and titles on LinkedIn or the company website when possible. Avoid “To Whom It May Concern” unless absolutely no other option exists.

4. Introduce Yourself and Your Focus Area

Keep your brief introduction to 2–3 sentences. Cover who you are, what you study, and what you specialize in.

Include:

• Your year and institution (“third-year Computer Science student at ETH Zurich”)

• 1–2 relevant achievements or project highlights

• Any mutual connection (referenced early)

Example opening: “I’m a second-year CS student at Carnegie Mellon focusing on LLM infrastructure and retrieval systems. Last semester, I built a retrieval-augmented chatbot using the OpenAI API and Postgres that handles 500+ queries daily for my university’s career center.”

If a friend, family member, professor, or conference contact referred you, mention it immediately. For example: “Dr. Park suggested I reach out to you regarding AI research internships this summer.”

Explain why you are emailing them specifically by referencing their work on vision-language models or a recent blog post on GPU inference optimization. This helps build rapport and signals genuine interest.

5. Show Why You’re a Fit: Skills, Projects, and Impact

Don’t turn your email into a full resume. Instead, provide 2–3 specific examples that align with the team’s work.

Focus on outcomes and technologies:

• “Implemented a transformer-based classifier in PyTorch with 94% accuracy on a custom dataset”

• “Deployed a Flask API to AWS handling 10K+ requests daily”

• “Reduced inference latency by 20% using ONNX optimization”

• “Built internal tooling for data labeling that achieved 95%+ annotation accuracy”

Include one clear link to your GitHub, portfolio, Kaggle, or personal site and label it clearly, for example: “View my ML projects here: github.com/yourname.” Avoid vague descriptors like “hardworking” or “passionate about AI.” Focus on showing, not telling. Fonzi’s candidate profiles for experienced engineers follow the same pattern: concise impact bullets paired with links to actual work, which is what hiring managers expect, even from interns.

6. Be Specific About the Internship You’re Seeking

Clarity about timing helps recipients quickly decide if a fit exists. Don’t make them guess.

State clearly:

• Exact availability: “May 25–August 30, 2026, full-time”

• Work arrangement preferences: “remote, 15–20 hours/week during Fall 2026 semester”

• Location constraints: “on-site in New York,” “remote-only,” or “hybrid in London”

• Work authorization if relevant

If no formal internship program exists, propose a specific project, for example: “I’d be interested in helping instrument evaluation pipelines, build internal dashboards, or benchmark LLM prompts for support ticket classification.”

7. Make a Direct, Low-Friction Ask

Your email should build toward one clear, reasonable next step.

Good asks:

• “Would you be open to a 15-minute call next week to discuss whether a Summer 2026 ML internship on your team could be a fit?”

• “If your team has openings for Summer 2026 interns, I’d love to be considered.”

• “I’d welcome a quick phone call at your convenience to learn more about potential opportunities.”

A quick call request is more likely to be accepted than asking for an immediate offer decision. Low-friction asks get higher response rates.

Avoid stacking multiple requests in one email. One ask per message keeps things clear.

8. Attach Your Resume and Add Links Thoughtfully

Always attach a short, tailored resume (1 page) for technical roles, along with relevant links.

Best practices:

• Name files clearly: “Lena_Kim_Resume_2026.pdf”

• Mention the attachment in the email body

• Include 1–2 key links: GitHub, LinkedIn, personal portfolio

• For AI/ML interns, mention public notebooks or repos with models and experiments

Many companies use applicant tracking systems and AI screeners. Clean formatting and descriptive filenames help reduce parsing errors and ensure your materials are reviewed correctly.

Include in your email signature your full name, school, expected graduation, and one or two relevant links.

9. Proofread, Send, and Follow Up Professionally

A final review can significantly improve your response rate and help you avoid careless mistakes.

Before sending:

• Read the email aloud for flow and clarity

• Use tools like Grammarly for grammar checks

• Double-check the recipient’s name, company name, and any pasted URLs

• Verify your attachment is actually attached

Following up:

Send a polite follow-up email after about a week (7–10 days) if you haven’t heard back. Keep it to 3–4 sentences:

“Hi [Name], I wanted to follow up on my email from last week regarding Summer 2026 internship opportunities with your ML team. I remain very interested in contributing to [specific project/area]. Please let me know if you’d be open to a quick phone call at your convenience. Thank you for your time.”

Limit follow-ups to two attempts per contact. If there is no reply, move on to other teams or companies. Persistence with professionalism is key, similar to how candidates engage with multiple high-signal interactions during Fonzi’s Match Day without over-messaging any single employer.