As a Biomedical Engineering Intern, you work alongside engineers on medical device design, testing, and regulatory activity — supporting CAD, lab work, verification testing, documentation, and the slow craft of learning a regulated industry. The work tends to be supervised, learning-heavy, and varied across whatever the team needs.
Most days mix supporting engineers on active projects with structured learning — assisting with CAD, instrumenting test fixtures, writing test reports, helping with regulatory documentation, sitting in on design reviews. You're often working in medical device companies, hospital clinical engineering, or research labs, and the rotational structure of many internships exposes you to multiple parts of the product cycle.
What tends to be harder than people expect is how much of medical device work is regulation and documentation rather than pure engineering. ISO 13485, design-control, risk analysis, and traceability shape almost every output, and the pace of development can feel slow next to consumer tech. Internships at startups vs large primes feel very different in scope and autonomy.
People who tend to thrive here are curious, detail-oriented, comfortable being the most junior person in the room, and quick to learn regulated workflows. If you want fast prototyping with no oversight, the medical space will push back. If you like building a foundation in engineering that touches patient care, the experience opens clear paths into device design, clinical engineering, or product roles.
Where this role sits in the broader career landscape — and where it can take you.
Roles like this one sit within a broader occupational category. The numbers below reflect that full landscape — helpful for context, but your specific experience will depend on level, specialty, and where you work.
Roles with similar work and overlapping career paths
View all Engineering roles →As a Biomedical Engineering Intern, you work alongside engineers on medical device design, testing, and regulatory activity — supporting CAD, lab work, verification testing, documentation, and the slow craft of learning a regulated industry. The work tends to be supervised, learning-heavy, and varied across whatever the team needs.
Median pay for a Biomedical Engineering Intern is about $107K nationally, with the field ranging roughly from $72K to $165K depending on experience, employer, and metro (BLS).
Core skills for this role include Reading Comprehension, Speaking, Active Listening, Writing, and Science.
Most people in this role hold a bachelor's degree.
Employment in this field is projected to grow about 5.2% through 2034, with roughly 21,860 people working in it today (BLS).
Closely related roles include Engineering Director, Environmental Program Manager, and Clinical Project Manager.
Truest gives you tools to understand your strengths, explore roles that fit, and plan your next move.
Explore Truest career tools