Backend Engineering Intern - OCaml

About the Role

To ensure someone can be effectively supported throughout the intern we cn only look to hire an intern in either Singapore or in Europe.

You'll work remotely within our Middle-end / Tooling team, focusing on improving the observability of Dune, the OCaml build system. This isn't about cosmetic changes; it's about digging into Dune's core to expose how it builds things, making complex OCaml projects more understandable.

Responsibilities

• Dive into the Dune codebase, identify areas where the build rules are translated into actions.
• Implement modifications directly in Dune's source code to expose fine-grained information about builds.
• Develop and contribute pull requests to the upstream `ocaml/dune` project, working with the maintainers.
• Experiment with your changes and new tooling on real, large-scale industrial OCaml codebases to validate their usefulness.
• Collaborate asynchronously with the team.

Requirements

Must have:

• Solid OCaml programming skills. You need to be comfortable reading, understanding, and writing idiomatic OCaml.
• Experience with basic Git and GitHub workflows (branching, committing, pull requests, code reviews).
• Good written and verbal English communication skills for collaborating with a remote, async team and upstream maintainers.

Nice to have:

• Prior experience using more than one build system (e.g., Cargo, Make, Bazel, SCons, Nix, etc.).

What Success Looks Like

You've made significant contributions to Dune, resulting in working prototypes or even merged changes for a
tool that clarifies what happened during a build and why. This could involve exposing new internal Dune data
structures or developing a basic analysis tool on top, verified on an industrial codebase.

Ahrefs does not engage with agencies or third party recruitment solutions for the roles we hire for. If at any point we need help, we'll let you know!