Apprentice, Experience
At Proto, we believe the best way to learn is by doing. Our Apprenticeship is designed to provide hands-on experience, mentorship, and exposure to real client challenges. We desire to influence your craft and development beyond the apprenticeship at Proto and in turn, receive inspiration from you to continuously evolve our own approaches and ways of working here. This is not a passive internship—you’ll be a contributing member of the team from day one.
Our Experience team bridges the gap between vision and execution, shaping how businesses engage with customers and scale their impact. As an Apprentice on the Experience team, you’ll play a key role in helping us design and develop proprietary tools and products that enhance and extend the value of our consulting work.
This apprenticeship may be for you if you are an ever-curious, motivated problem solver who thrives in ambiguity. You could be a designer with an interest in strategy, a product thinker with a knack for design, or someone who wants to bridge both worlds. You are able to share examples of real projects you’ve worked on through freelance work, student initiatives, hackathons, startups, or personal experiments—and are ready to apply that experience in a professional setting.
This role is intentionally flexible—we’re looking for a motivated, hands-on problem solver who wants to help us create new offerings. Whether you lean more toward design, experience strategy, product management, or a mix, this role is about applying your skills in a real-world setting.
What you will do:
As an Apprentice on the Experience team, you’ll contribute to both product development and client engagements.
Develop New Offerings: Help prototype and refine experimental tools and products that extend Proto’s consulting impact—whether through design, strategy, or product thinking.
Support Client Work: Contribute to experience strategy in paid engagements by assisting with research, analysis, design, or prototyping, depending on your strengths.
Prototype & Test Solutions: Collaborate with the team to design, build, and iterate on interfaces, workflows, strategic tools, or service concepts—whatever best fits the problem at hand.
Engage in Team Initiatives: Participate in Design Minds (our internal experience and design forum) and Proto Tech Club, supporting projects in ways that align with your skills and interests.
Qualifications
Graduating from undergraduate or graduate level school and available for full-time employment from September 2025;
Real, practical experience in either design or product management—or both. This could be from freelance projects, student-led initiatives, personal experiments, hackathons, startups, or internships;
Hands-on experience with AI tools and an experimental mindset toward new technologies;
Proficiency in industry-standard tools, e.g., Adobe Creative Suite, Google Suite, Figma, Slack, etc;
An ability to work in ambiguity, quickly learning and adapting to new challenges;
Based in the New York City area and available 40 hours per week continuously throughout an 8-week period.
Our full-time (40+ hours weekly) apprenticeship program begins June 24, 2025 and runs 8 weeks total. Apprentices with undergraduate degrees receive $30 per hour and masters’ program graduates receive $50 per hour. The goal of every apprenticeship position is to work towards an Associate level full-time offer. Full-time opportunities are contingent upon meeting performance expectations throughout the Apprenticeship.. As a project-by-project based business, we cannot guarantee availability, but always offer apprenticeships in good faith that we are working towards a full-time opportunity at Proto.
Proto is a New York based company with offices at 3 World Trade. Our staff is encouraged to work-from-office on days of their choosing based on personal preferences, collaboration moments, client meetings, and all-company gatherings. Our core business hours are generally 9:30am-6:00pm EST; however, due to our client service model and collaborative working culture, individual working hours fluctuate to reflect client deadlines and deliverables.
Interested in applying? Right this way.