What are the top internship jobs for CS?

I haven't got much visibility of games companies, so I can only think of a few off the top of my head. There are some very well known ones like Rockstar North, Team 17 and Unity who I'm fairly sure are hiring interns/placement students on a regular basis

When it comes to trying to find game dev internships you probably need to go directly to the company or do a specific google search using the company name, so the best thing is to start by listing the companies first, and then do some digging for each of those.

Here are a few I found:

In reality, many medium-large companies who offer IT products/services (or have in-house development teams) have a regular intake of interns because it means getting the same work done while paying a lot less. I don't imagine the game industry is much different, although it is certainly more competitive.

In terms of experience, the best internship for getting into game development would be at any game company really. Either that or something involving C++ running a real-time system. (e.g. things like streaming audio or video, real-time network traffic, simulation systems, industrial control systems, etc.). C++ itself is still fairly widely used in games, and there are a lot of similarities between a game and something like a traffic simulator or a video streaming service.

As far as pay is concerned, the bigger companies who make the most money usually pay more, otherwise the main factor in pay is usually the location, due to the differences in living costs. Most companies realise that interns are often living and working away from home without any support from family or student finance, so that's usually a rough guide for the salary. I was paid £13k for my placement year, but that was a few years ago, and in the midlands so average rent and living costs I guess - students are exempt from paying council tax, which saves about £1500 per year.

It's also worth looking at job adverts which have 'junior' or 'graduate' in the job title - if you've got a good CV and the employer thinks you're a strong candidate they might be interested in hiring you for a 12 month internship.

Finally, I don't know what Cardiff is like about overseas placements, but can't think of a reason why they'd have a problem with it. I know that Staffs had quite a few students on overseas placements in countries like Switzerland, Germany and Sweden.