Barclays - Technology Developer Intern & Internship Journey
My Barclays journey was a rather unexpected one. What started with the college recruitment process in August 2025 eventually led to a two-month internship in 2026, with a surprising twist in between.
1. Company and Role
Company: Barclays
Role: Technology Developer Intern
College: Pune Institute of Computer Technology (PICT)
Batch: 2027
Internship Duration: 15 June 2026 – 7 August 2026
Team: US Consumer Bank Apply Team
2. Recruitment Process
I was selected through the college recruitment process conducted in August 2025.
The selection process consisted of an Online Assessment followed by two interview rounds.
3. Online Assessment
The OA was conducted on 9th August 2025 and was conducted on HackerEarth and consisted of:
20 MCQs
5 SQL Questions
It covered programming, OOP, core CS fundamentals and SQL.
The SQL questions were not particularly difficult, but understanding the requirement and constructing the query could take some time.
The assessment primarily tested conceptual understanding and problem-solving rather than memorization.
After the OA, around 40 candidates progressed to the interview rounds.
3. Interview Rounds
Round 1: Technical Interview
The first round started with my introduction, followed by questions around my resume and projects. I was asked about the projects I had worked on, my specific role in them, the technologies I used and the decisions I made while developing them.
The discussion then moved towards OOP concepts and principles. I was asked to explain the concepts and subsequently write an OOP based piece of code. After writing it, I had to explain my approach, followed by cross-questioning around the implementation.
The interview then covered DBMS and SQL, including query-based questions, along with some questions related to software development and Operating Systems.
Overall, the round was quite interactive. Rather than simply asking definitions, the interviewer often followed up on my answers and tried to understand how well I could apply the concepts.
Round 1 Results: 24 out of 40 candidates were selected for the second round. I was one of them.
Round 2: Behavioral Interview
The second round was primarily behavioural.
I was asked to describe a situation where I had to choose between conflicting situations within a team, explain how I handled it and, more importantly, explain the reasoning behind my decision.
I discussed scenarios from my INC event and project experiences, explaining the challenges I faced, how I approached them and how I worked with the team to reach a solution.
The discussion focused more on my thought process, decision-making and ability to work in a team.
Final Round 2 Results: 16 out of 24 candidates were selected.
I was not one of them.
And this is where my Barclays story gets interesting.
4. The Unexpected Barclays Message
After the final interview results, I had accepted that the Barclays opportunity hadn't worked out.
Then, on 12 March 2026, almost seven months after the interviews, a message appeared in our TnP group saying that I had been selected for Barclays.
I genuinely did not expect it. 😂
One moment, I had almost moved on from the interview outcome, and the next moment, I was reading a message saying I had been selected.
That completely unexpected message eventually turned the interview experience from August 2025 into an internship opportunity in June 2026.
5. Joining Barclays
On 15 June 2026, I finally joined Barclays as a Technology Developer Intern.
The transition from college projects to a large enterprise codebase was a completely different experience. Instead of building a project from scratch, I had to understand an existing system, its architecture, dependencies, technologies and the reasoning behind decisions that had already been made.
I was part of the US Consumer Bank Apply team, working on the modernization of Apply-Web, a business-critical platform supporting the Barclaycard US credit-card application journey.
The modernization involved technologies and frameworks such as:
Java 8 → Java 21
Stripes → Spring MVC
Spring 5 → Spring 6
javax → Jakarta
Tomcat 9 → Tomcat 11
This gave me hands-on exposure to the challenges involved in modernizing a large existing enterprise application, especially around compatibility, dependencies, testing and integration.
6. Internship Experience
One of the biggest learnings for me was understanding how different enterprise development can be from college projects.
In college, we generally start with a problem and build a solution from the ground up. In an enterprise environment, the first step is often understanding what already exists, why it exists that way, and how a change can be introduced without breaking other parts of the system.
During the internship, I worked with the team on the modernization efforts and got exposure to debugging, testing, dependency issues, framework upgrades and integration challenges.
Beyond the technical aspects, working with experienced professionals helped me understand the importance of communication, asking the right questions, discussing approaches and taking ownership of the work.
7. College to Corporate
The internship helped me realize that knowing a technology is only one part of software development.
Working on a real-world system requires understanding the business context, existing architecture, dependencies and potential impact of a change before actually implementing it.
That shift in mindset was probably one of the most valuable takeaways from my internship.
8. Final Outcome
My internship at Barclays concluded on 7 August 2026.
What makes the journey special for me is that it started with an interview where I wasn't selected in the final round, followed by a completely unexpected selection message months later, and eventually led to an internship where I got to work on a real enterprise application.
After completing my internship, I was fortunate to receive a Pre-Placement Offer (PPO) from Barclays.
Looking back, the Barclays journey was a good reminder that sometimes a “no” isn't necessarily the end of the story.
