We Love InternsProject Jiachen Open Source Internship
Home / Blog / Project Jiachen's lead launches a joint open-source internship recruitment and training project

Project Jiachen's lead launches a joint open-source internship recruitment and training project

2024-06-08 　Starting pointJoint programme

Editor's note — This is the first post on this site. On 8 June 2024, the lead of Project Jiachen sent this announcement to member organisations; more than two months later the first positions went out one after another, and two years later the project was upgraded to the Five-Colour Stone Project. Below is the full text in translation (keeping the slips of the original; nothing has been corrected), with a few notes three years on at the end. The original was provided and authorised for republication by its author.15

Project announcement

On 8 June 2024, Wu Wei, lead of Project Jiachen, released a new project to Project Jiachen member organisations: [joint open-source internship recruitment and training]. The motive and starting point of this project is "member organisations accelerate the RISC-V ecosystem work that matters to their own business with the smallest possible spend of money and management resources", fully combining the lead's experience of running large-scale internship programmes over the past 10 years and building on the work PLCT Lab has already established in open-source communities. From the Jiachen Dragon year, more than 2,000 internship places open each year, and more than 1,000 student internships are recruited.

Project name

Project Jiachen joint open-source internship recruitment and training

Project goal

From the Jiachen Dragon year, Project Jiachen member organisations authorise the lead of Project Jiachen to recruit interns for open-source RISC-V work, opening a total of more than 2,000 internship places each year. The lead recruits at least 1,000 university students to take part in internships.

Funding arrangement

The lead of Project Jiachen is responsible for recruiting, training and managing interns. Companies participating in the project sign internship agreements directly with students, and pay the interns each month according to the externally visible delivery list and the stipend payment recommendation provided by the lead.

Internship tasks

The first batch takes RISC-V + ROS and the RISC-V documentation project as pilot projects; later, the Triton RISC-V software stack, new 32-bit RISC-V applications, the XiangShan Nanhu laptop, openKylin adaptation, SG2380 AI optimisation and others will be added. Project Jiachen member companies may propose new internship positions, and may limit the task scope of their own positions. Project Jiachen member organisations do not need to pay for internship projects that are of no help to the company. The specific expected deliverables will contribute directly to the company's products or business.

(The original attached a pilot case here: [Internship opportunity] ROS robot systems development intern.)

Contract formalities

The first internship signed is an open-source remote internship. The first internship contract is for three months; interns may join and leave at any time, and the internship certificate runs from the contract's effective date to the actual date of departure.

PLCT Lab and Kubuds are the organisations that host the training for these internship positions.

Kubuds is the backstop employer of the Project Jiachen joint internship training project, ensuring that every intern who passes the interview with the lead of Project Jiachen receives an internship contract, an internship certificate, and the monthly internship stipend.

Companies taking part in the joint internship project may use their own internship contract or the template recommended by Project Jiachen (adapted and simplified from a template downloaded from the website of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security).

After the internship period ends, the intern is free to negotiate a renewal with any Project Jiachen member company; this internship places no constraint on any later internship contract, and the form and content of the later internship are agreed between the employer and the intern.

STEM support for under-represented groups

The Project Jiachen internship project reserves at least 20% of places for women engineers. PLCT Lab reserves 50% of places for women and under-represented groups.

Member companies that have replied to join and offered internship places

Kubuds, PLCT Lab, Milk-V, Yingqi Intelligence, Zhongke Weilan, PerfXLab.

Reading this announcement three years later

1. Of the three sentences, only one really matters

The announcement contains many clauses, but the one that actually determined what this system looks like is: "pay the interns each month according to the externally visible delivery list and the stipend payment recommendation provided by the lead".

It solves three things at once: money is not paid for hours attended but for things that can be seen in public; companies bear no management cost and only sign and pay; the discretion over "what this month was worth" stays with the lead. The rule in the repository today — "count externally visible output each month, agree the stipend with the mentor, range 0–5k" — is the expansion of that sentence.1

2. "Do not need to pay for internship projects that are of no help to the company"

For companies this sentence is a good argument; for interns it is a filter: a position must produce something useful to the company, or it is not created. It also explains why the position numbers keep changing — positions are issued according to company needs, not according to the words "training programme".

3. The backstop sentence is the foundation of the whole system

Kubuds is the backstop employer of the Project Jiachen joint internship training project, ensuring that every intern who passes the interview with the lead of Project Jiachen receives an internship contract, an internship certificate, and the monthly internship stipend.

In three years the PLCT brand retired, the TARSIER team disbanded, several teams rose and fell, and this clause never changed. For someone who has not yet graduated, "someone guarantees the contract, the certificate and the money every month" is more solid than any vision statement.

4. The share went from 20% to 30%

The announcement promised "at least 20% of places reserved for women engineers; PLCT Lab reserves 50% for women and under-represented groups"; the repository README today says "reserve at least 30% of internship places for women applicants".1

The two numbers can coexist without contradiction: one is the floor promised to member organisations at launch, the other is the current recruitment line. It is worth recording because this kind of adjustment is itself evidence that the system is growing.

5. What happened after that

  • June–July 2024: within two weeks of launch, positions such as J123 (TPU-MLIR), J126 (openKylin ROS), J127 (XiangShan laptop) and J128 (deepin) went out one after another; on 14 July recognition of the "One Student One Chip" CBAS system was announced, and certified students received internship offers directly.16
  • October 2024: the repository made that famous subtraction, and 253 files were put away.
  • November 2024: those who passed the preliminary round of the MoonBit challenge skipped the machine test and went straight to mentor pick.
  • February 2026: the project was upgraded to the Five-Colour Stone Project, turning from "finding and screening talent" to "training talent systematically and over the long term", with the cycle stretched to ten years.2
  • September 2026: position numbers reached K181–K185, all described as "this position is part of the Five-Colour Stone Project".

From one announcement to a ten-year training system took two years. In between, the honest sentence about money was never changed.

Original source

Copyright in the original text belongs in part to Project Jiachen; republished with the author's authorisation. "Reading this announcement three years later" was written for this site.

← Back to the blog