AI Research Intern

Intuitive•Sunnyvale, CA

About The Position

Join Future Forward, Intuitive’s advanced concepts group, and report to an engineering lead working on AI for the next generation of robotic-assisted surgery. You will own an open-ended research and prototyping project in areas such as supervised autonomy and automation for robotic-assisted surgery, or AI that helps care teams deliver care more consistently and efficiently. The project will draw on areas including computer vision, generative AI, robotics, and agentic AI; its scope will be shaped around your background and the team’s priorities. A successful internship will result in a working prototype, clear evidence of its performance, and findings the team can build on. You will work with researchers, engineers, and clinical experts, document and present your results, and may contribute to publications or patent filings where the results warrant it. The internship requires full-time availability, approximately 40 hours per week, for 10–12 weeks, starting in May or June. Specific start dates are shared during recruiting. Interns must be enrolled in and returning to an accredited degree-seeking academic program after the internship.

Requirements

Research or applied experience in at least one of computer vision, generative AI, robotics or autonomy, or agentic AI (LLM agents and tool use).
Strong Python skills and hands-on experience with a deep learning framework such as PyTorch.
A track record of taking a loosely defined problem to a result, demonstrated through publications, open-source work, or projects others have used.
Sound experimental practice, including the ability to set up fair comparisons and distinguish real improvement from noise.
Clear written and verbal communication with technical and non-technical audiences.
Must be currently enrolled in and returning to an accredited degree-seeking academic program after the internship.
Must be available to work full-time, approximately 40 hours per week, during a 10–12 week period starting in May or June.
Current enrollment in a Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, or related degree-seeking program at the Doctorate level. Master’s students may also be considered with two or more years of relevant industry or research experience.

Nice To Haves

Publications at leading venues such as CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CoRL, RSS, ICRA, or IROS.
Experience with 3D vision, scene understanding, or spatial reasoning.
Experience with generative models, such as diffusion or vision-language models, or LLM agents applied to real-world tasks.
Experience with robot learning, robotics simulation such as NVIDIA Isaac Sim/Lab or MuJoCo, or ROS 2.
Industry experience building ML or AI systems that other people relied on.
Interest in or exposure to healthcare, surgical, or medical robotics.

Responsibilities

Own an open-ended research and prototyping project scoped with a mentor.
Explore applications of computer vision, generative AI, and agentic AI to problems in surgery and the operating room.
Build working prototypes and evaluate them against clear baselines.
Work closely with researchers, engineers, and clinical experts.
Document and present results, and contribute to publications or patent filings where results warrant it.