Ventures Intern

About the Team

OakNorth’s Ventures team invests in and incubates early-stage companies that complement the bank and its appetite. The team works closely with founders and with OakNorth’s co-founder. The intern supports the team across its investment and venture activity.

Responsibilities

- Investment Due Diligence: Support due diligence on investment opportunities under review by OakNorth, covering the commercial, technical and financial aspects of each company.

- Commercial: market sizing, competitor analysis and assessment of pricing and customer evidence.

- Technical: review of the product, its architecture and the engineering team’s claims, with a clear view of what has been built and what is planned.

- Financial: building and testing financial models where required.

- Deal Support: Support the activities that arise through deal making, including preparation of materials, tracking of actions and follow-up with founders.

- Venture Support: Contribute to the ventures the team incubates, including problem framing, customer research, early prototypes and launch planning.

- Analysis and Problem Solving: Apply a structured, engineering-led approach to business questions, breaking problems down and testing assumptions, and make use of AI tools in research, analysis and writing. The role does not involve production software development, but it does require the ability to read and assess code, system designs and data pipelines.

- Research: Monitor the sectors and technologies relevant to the team’s investment focus and produce concise research notes for the team.

Skills and Experience

- Education: Final-year student or recent graduate with a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in an engineering, computer science or quantitative discipline, with demonstrable experience of building software.

- Technical Foundation: Ability to read and assess code, system designs and data pipelines, and to form a view on an engineering team’s claims.

- Business Acumen: Demonstrated interest in how businesses operate, compete and grow. Prior experience in investing or finance is desirable but not required.

- Entrepreneurial Exposure: Experience in a startup or early-stage environment, or evidence of having built or launched something independently, such as a project with real users.

- Ownership and Initiative: Able to take responsibility for a piece of work and drive it to completion with limited supervision, seeking guidance where needed.

- AI Literacy: Comfortable using AI tools in day-to-day work, with a working understanding of their capabilities and limitations.

- Communication: Clear and concise written and verbal communication, including the ability to explain technical topics to a non-technical audience.