AI Engineer Intern

USA Rare Earth, LLC • Washington, DC

54d

About The Position

As an AI Engineer Intern, you'll work directly with business stakeholders, scientists, and engineers to design and ship AI-powered tools that improve how we operate, communicate, and make decisions across the mining and processing business unit. This is not a research role. You'll be building things that go into production and get used by real people on real projects. If you've shipped something with LLMs, agents, or data pipelines and you're curious about what those tools look like when applied to hard physical-world problems, this role was designed for you.

Requirements

• Currently enrolled in an MS program in Computer Science, Data Science, Software Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or a related field
• Demonstrated experience shipping an AI product such as agentic assistant or a RAG — portfolio, GitHub, or prior internship evidence required
• Proficiency in Python, including working with APIs, data structures, and third-party libraries
• Hands-on experience with at least one LLM framework or toolchain (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, OpenAI/Anthropic APIs, Haystack)
• Comfort working with structured data (SQL or Pandas) and unstructured data (PDFs, text corpora)
• Strength in software engineering best practices
• Strong written communication: you'll be writing prompts, specs, and documentation alongside code

Nice To Haves

• Currently working on a PhD in Computer Science, AI, Data Science, Software Engineering, or similar
• Experience with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, ChromaDB), or embedding pipelines
• Familiarity with industrial, scientific, or time-series data (SCADA, historians, lab reports, assay data)
• Background or coursework in a physical science or engineering discipline (e.g. mining, metallurgy, chemical engineering, geology, or similar)
• Experience building multi-step or tool-using agents
• Exposure to BI tools or data visualization (PowerBI, Streamlit)
• Experience in one or more of the following roles: Python Developer, DevOps Engineer, Data Warehouse Specialist/Data Engineer/Data Architect
• Prior internship or project work in an industrial, energy, or materials company

Responsibilities

• Design and build LLM-powered agents that automate and augment business workflows, ranging from document handling and stakeholder communication to operational Q&A and data retrieval
• Develop conversational interfaces over structured and unstructured data, enabling non-technical users to query operational and business data in plain English
• Integrate external data sources (commodity markets, regulatory filings, industry benchmarks) into internal tools and reporting workflows
• Collaborate with SMEs (engineers, metallurgists, and project managers) to translate domain knowledge into agent behavior, prompts, and retrieval pipelines
• Contribute to a shared Python codebase, including object-oriented modules for process modeling and data transformation
• Participate in sprint reviews and stakeholder demos, iterating rapidly based on feedback from end users

Benefits

• Equal Employment Opportunities
• Reasonable accommodations according to applicable federal, state, and/or local laws
• Assistance applying for employment through this site due to disability

What This Job Offers

• Career Level: Intern