That's a very low wage for a skilled software engineer though.

not to shabby that would equate to a senior developer in London BTW

For England that might be true, but in London you should expect around £65k+ for senior dev roles.

I'm sure you could negotiate up to £90k given the right circumstances.

In GBP its only ~40k a year...

Considering that tech jobs I’ve seen advertised in England pay between 1/3 and 1/10 of what I would expect a similar job in the US to pay, that seems about right.

Does anyone know what the conversion rate is for these interns?

My friends who did internship at Google were paid almost like engineers. The main differences is that the recruiting process is lighter because you work there for a few month only and of course you have less responsibilities.

He's probably still in school. The position may be related to how much time he has available to dedicate to working.

I was thinking the same thing (maybe "intern" means something very different here?)

I believe he's still an undergrad, I don't know about google but here an intern can be anything from a pre university student to someone finishing a phd.

Exactly. It’s not unheard of for “intern” to just be HR’s shorthand for “someone who is working here for a fixed timespan before returning to a university”. I know of a 40 year old professor who spent a summer as an “intern” at Apple circa 1990.

At NASA you're an intern for the first 18 months after you're hired. Could be something similar going on here.