Meritocracy Fellowship

A World-Changing Company

Palantir builds the world’s leading software for data-driven decisions and operations. By bringing the right data to the people who need it, our platforms empower our partners to develop lifesaving drugs, forecast supply chain disruptions, locate missing children, and more.

The Program

American universities have lost their way. Once incubators of meritocracy, today’s colleges prioritize other values. They reward conformity over originality, safety over risk, and comfort over truth.

We launched the Meritocracy Fellowship to cultivate exceptional talent, increasingly overlooked, regardless of background. Based purely on merit and academic excellence, graduating high school students will be invited to interview, and select applicants will receive a Meritocracy Fellowship. Those that excel will obtain offers to join Palantir full time.

Skip the debt. Reclaim years of your life. Earn the Palantir degree.

The Curriculum

What is the West? Is it worth defending? In what ways is America exceptional within the Western world? At Palantir, Fellows begin their journey by exploring these fundamental questions through curated readings and seminars with leading experts. This initial period is designed to immerse Fellows in rigorous debate and open exchange of ideas—laying the intellectual foundation before they join forward-deployed engineering or internal software teams.

In our inaugural cohort, Fellows engaged with world-class historians, philosophers, scientists, writers, and technologists, including Gideon Rose, Edward Wittenstein, Bob McGrew, Reihan Salaam, Hal Brands, Shilo Brooks, Larry Arn, Mark Lilla, Lawrence Wright, Adam Klein, Brendan McCord, Lt. General (ret.) George Smith, Bob Langer, Itai Yanai, among others. They also learned from Palantirians such as Dr. Alex Karp, Shyam Sankar, Ted Mabrey, Akshay Krishnaswamy, Courtney Bowman, Nicholas Zamiska, Samantha Clark, Parvathy Menon, and more.

Our most vital technologies cannot be created by those indifferent to their purpose. Today’s challenges demand builders who are guided by conviction and a clear sense of mission.

The Role

Following the first part of the Fellowship, you’ll work alongside Forward Deployed Engineers and software developers to build software and deliver customer outcomes. In this role, the challenges you'll seek will require a curious and analytical approach, a sharp intuition for product, and a strong degree of user insight. You will be matched to roles based on your skills, interests, and experience.

What We Value:
• High degree of agency, autonomy, and maturity
• Extraordinary ability to confront open-ended and ambiguous problems
• Adaptive and introspective; willing to learn, guide, lead, and follow
• Ability to communicate and collaborate effectively with a variety of individuals, including engineers, users and non-technical team members
• Willingness to learn proactively, make decisions independently, and ask questions when stuck
• Experience with programming, scripting, or statistical packages (eg. Python, R, Matlab, SQL)

What We Require:
• High school certificate of graduation at the start of the internship
• Candidates cannot be enrolled in an accredited U.S. university
• Candidates cannot have previously earned an undergraduate degree
• Spending fall 2026 (August - December) at Palantir exclusively; candidates cannot simultaneously be enrolled in university classes.

Salary

The salary range for this position is estimated to be $5,400/month. Further note that total compensation for this position will be determined by each individual’s relevant qualifications, work experience, skills, and other factors. This estimate excludes the value of any benefits offered; and the potential future value of any long-term incentives.

Life at Palantir

We want every Palantirian to achieve their best outcomes, that’s why we celebrate individuals’ strengths, skills, and interests, from your first interview to your longterm growth, rather than rely on traditional career ladders. Paying attention to the needs of our community enables us to optimize our opportunities to grow and helps ensure many pathways to success at Palantir. Promoting health and well-being across all areas of Palantirians’ lives is just one of the ways we’re investing in our community. Learn more at Life at Palantir and note that our offerings may vary by region.

In keeping consistent with Palantir’s values and culture, we believe employees are “better together” and in-person work affords the opportunity for more creative outcomes. Therefore, we encourage employees to work from our offices to foster connectivity and innovation. Many teams do offer hybrid options (WFH a day or two a week), allowing our employees to strike the right trade-off for their personal productivity. Based on business need, there are a few roles that allow for “Remote” work on an exceptional basis. If you are applying for one of these roles, you must work from the state in which you are employed. If the posting is specified as Onsite, you are required to work from an office.

If you want to empower the world's most important institutions, you belong here. Palantir values excellence regardless of background. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer for all, including but not limited to Veterans and those with disabilities. Palantir is committed to making the application and hiring process accessible to everyone and will provide a reasonable accommodation for those living with a disability. If you need an accommodation for the application or hiring process, please reach out and let us know how we can help.

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