How To Become An Architectural Internship: What It Is and Career Path

What is an architectural internship and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted expert

Teresa Rosano

An architectural internship is the formal training needed to become a certified architect. Participants of this internship assist an architect with all aspects of architectural work. Their duties may include maintaining project files, conducting research on construction sites regarding zoning laws and regulations, and preparing presentations for clients. Asides from that, they prepare drawings and models. They generate architectural drawings, which include site plans, floor plans, sections, elevations, and details. Also, they create drawing sets for project pricing, permitting, and construction.

Interested applicants must possess technical, teamwork, interpersonal, organization, communication, and negotiation skills. You must be enrolled in an architectural-related major. You must be proficient in Revita and Microsoft.

Also, you must have a basic knowledge of design requirements, construction methods and details, and materials. Proficiency in AutoCAD, SketchUp, and Bluebeam is a plus. This internship pays up to $59,071 per year or $28.4 per hour. It varies from $46,000 to $75,000.

What general advice would you give to an architectural internship?

Teresa Rosano

Assistant Professor of Practice, University of Arizona

Try to obtain a wide variety of experiences so you have exposure to many aspects of the profession.

ScoreArchitectural InternshipUS Average

Salary

4.2

Avg. Salary $53,914

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

4.3

Growth rate -3%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

6.0

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.70%

Asian 7.02%

Black or African American 3.09%

Hispanic or Latino 11.66%

Unknown 5.20%

White 72.33%

Gender

female 37.26%

male 62.74%

Age - 45

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 45

Stress level

4.3

Stress level is moderate

7.1 - high

Complexity level

6.7

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

6.0

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become an architectural internship

Explore architectural internship education requirements

Most common architectural internship degrees

Bachelor's

73.9 %

Master's

14.1 %

Associate

7.1 %

Start to develop specific architectural internship skills

Skills	Percentages
Sketch	14.13%
Auto CAD	7.06%
PowerPoint	6.68%
BIM	5.11%
Adobe Photoshop	4.63%

Complete relevant architectural internship training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 4-10 years on post-employment, on-the-job training. New architectural interns learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as an architectural internship based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real architectural internship resumes.

Research architectural internship duties and responsibilities

Manage a team of 6 experts in Cisco networks, VMware, Cisco UCS, NetApp and many other technologies.
Lead microarchitecture and RTL designer of cache control and memory control for Intel's next generation server microprocessor.
Web development HTML, CSS, MySQL and SQL, PHP, jQuery, AJAX.
Utilize REVIT to produce architectural working drawings.6.

Prepare your architectural internship resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your architectural internship resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on an architectural internship resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable architectural internship resume templates

Build a professional architectural internship resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your architectural internship resume.