Internship Graphic Design - UI/UX - Marketing - Development

UI/UX, Graphic Design or Social Media Internship (m/f/d) at VISS - Mandatory Internship Only

Karlsruhe, Germany | Mandatory internship (Pflichtpraktikum) only | 3 to 6 months | On-site | Starting September/October 2026 | Stipend 800 EUR per month | 40 hours per week

Straight talk first

There are three areas where we genuinely need help: product interface work, graphic design and brand, and social media. We are not going to pretend we need all three from one person in equal measure. Pick the one you are strongest in, tell us what your second one is, and we will build the plan around that in your first week.

What does not change: whatever you pick, you own it. What you make gets shipped, gets shown to investors, customers and ministries, and gets judged by people who will tell you plainly what is wrong. The pace is high and for much of what you touch there is no playbook, because nobody has built this product before. In exchange you compress years of learning into a few months, with direct mentoring from the founders.

What this is not: a rotation programme where you sample each area for a few weeks and leave with nothing finished. You pick a centre of gravity and you go deep on it.

Why this work at VISS is not decoration

We sell hardware security to organisations that test us technically before they believe us. Two things follow. In the product, our interface has to make an invisible property, whether this machine is actually protected right now, legible in under two seconds, to a soldier, a hospital IT administrator, and a government procurement officer, all of whom have different tolerances for ambiguity. Get that wrong and the product is unusable regardless of how good the silicon is.

Everywhere else, every visual and every sentence is a credibility test. Too vague and nobody understands the technology. Too loud and we lose the credibility our entire sales motion depends on. A pitch deck that looks improvised costs us a funding round. A booth that looks generic costs us the conversations we flew there for.

This is the part of the company where physics becomes something a human can see, read and act on.

Pick your track

Track A: Product UI/UX

• Companion App. The interface most customers touch first. Pairing, device status, alerts, recovery flows. From problem statement through wireframe and Figma spec to engineering handoff, including the reviews where your work gets torn apart.
• Device UI and embedded HMI. The hardest constraint set in the building: small screen, minimal input, security-critical states that must never be misread. Almost no prior art exists. This is where you would do your most original work.
• Management console. Fleet and device administration for enterprise and public-sector customers. Dense data, role models, audit trails, permission boundaries. Designing for the administrator who manages 400 devices, not the one who manages one.
• Design system. Tokens, components, states and documentation. Right now this is thinner than we would like.

Track B: Graphic Design and Brand

• Investor and sales material. Pitch deck components, one-pagers, product sheets, case studies. Documents that get opened in rooms where a funding or procurement decision is made.
• Trade fairs and events. Booth graphics, printed material, signage, giveaways, for defence formats, industry fairs and investor events.
• Product and brand assets. Iconography, diagrams that explain how the hardware actually works, art direction for product photography and renders, template systems the rest of the team can use without you.
• Consistency. Our identity holding together across product, web, print and social, without turning into a straitjacket.

Track C: Social Media and Content

• LinkedIn as our primary channel. Editorial plan, visual formats, carousels, technical explainers pulled out of the engineering team.
• Founder content. Working directly with the CEO on what gets said publicly and how.
• Campaigns and launches. Product announcements, award and funding news, event pushes. You plan the asset set, produce it, publish it, and see what it did.
• Website and landing pages. Structure, copy, campaign pages.

Development, if you have it

Not required for any track, and a real multiplier if you bring it. If you can write HTML, CSS and some JavaScript or TypeScript, you will ship your own work instead of waiting in someone else's queue: website and landing pages, your own components, working prototypes. You would work in the repo, open pull requests, and get reviewed by engineers who will tell you plainly what is wrong. We do not expect you to arrive as a strong engineer. We expect you to leave as a better one.

How the plan gets built

In your first week we write down what you own, what your second area is, and what success looks like at the end of your internship. That document is short, it is honest, and we both sign it. It changes only if we agree to change it. We would rather commit to something specific with you than sell you a vague promise about variety.

What we build

VISS develops the next generation of hardware security devices: a physical protection layer that shields computers from cyberattacks, critical for defence, healthcare and critical infrastructure. Winner of the German StartUp Cup (Cybersecurity), EU Cybersecurity Innovator of the Year 2025 and 2026. Supported by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space, the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, the KASTEL Security Research Labs (KIT) and NATO (via NATO DIANA).

Who you will work with

A team that has shipped real, complex hardware-software systems, not just apps: developers of tank targeting sights, ex-robotics founders, an F1 steering wheel developer, chip designers with 20+ years of experience. You will be the person in the room arguing for the user and for the reader, often against people who understand the machine better than you do.

What you get

• A steep curve. Deep tech, security-critical work, and a company at the stage where your decisions still visibly change things.
• Portfolio. Work that is shipped, defensible, and unusual enough that people will ask you about it in every future interview.
• Network and reference. Direct exposure to VCs, government officials and enterprise customers, plus a personal reference from the founder.
• A path forward. Working student position or a full role after graduation, if the fit is there.

What you bring

Regardless of track:

• Enrolled in a programme in graphic or communication design, interaction design, HCI, media informatics, media or computer science, industrial design, marketing or a related field, and your study regulations must require a mandatory internship (Pflichtpraktikum). This one is not negotiable; see "Terms".
• A portfolio that shows your thinking, not only your output. We care more about how you got to a result than how the result looks.
• You can write. Clean, precise, no filler. Almost everything you make also needs words on it, and we would rather you wrote them than waited for someone else to.
• Structured, self-directed working style. You think two steps ahead and you ask when you do not know.
• English at a professional level. German is useful, and helpful for print, press and public funding work, but our working language with you will be English.
• You must already be allowed to work in Germany - if you are currently not in Europe and do not hold a valid visa, we can not sponsor your visa.

Depending on your track:

• UI/UX: fluency in Figma, including components, variants, auto layout, prototyping, and specs an engineer can actually build from.
• Graphic design: command of layout, type and grid, and comfort in the Adobe suite or an equivalent. Print production experience is a plus.
• Social media: you understand what actually performs on LinkedIn in a B2B and technical context, and you can turn an engineer's explanation into something a non-engineer will read to the end.

Nice to have, not required: HTML, CSS, JavaScript or TypeScript; React or a comparable framework; accessibility standards (WCAG, BITV); experience designing for embedded, industrial or hardware interfaces; motion, video or 3D; first exposure to B2B or deep tech communication; interest in cybersecurity or defence technology.

You do not tick every box? Apply anyway. We care how you think and how fast you learn, not about a perfect CV.

Terms

• Type: Mandatory internship (Pflichtpraktikum) only, as required by your study regulations. This is a hard requirement, not a preference. We cannot host voluntary, orientation or post-graduation internships in this role under any circumstances. If your programme does not mandate an internship, please do not apply. We will ask for the relevant excerpt of your study regulations in the first screening step.
• Duration: 3 to 6 months, matching the period your study regulations require.
• Start: September or October 2026.
• Location: Karlsruhe, on-site. This is not a remote or hybrid role. The hardware is here, and so is the team.
• Hours: 40 hours per week.
• Stipend: 800 EUR per month. To be precise about what that is: a mandatory internship is exempt from the German statutory minimum wage (§ 22 (1) no. 1 MiLoG), so this is a voluntary contribution from us towards your living costs, not a salary. We would rather state that plainly than let you discover it in the contract.

How to apply

Send to [email protected]:

• Your CV
• A short statement (max. 300 words). Name your primary track and your second one, and tell us why you, why now, why VISS.
• A portfolio link with two or three case studies. Lead with your strongest track. Write two sentences on each explaining what was actually your part.

No filler. We reply within 5 working days. The process is a maximum of three conversations plus one small task on a real problem of ours, in the track you named.

VISS is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applications regardless of gender, origin, age, religion, disability or sexual identity.