AI Research Intern

Intuitive•Sunnyvale, CA

2d•$62 - $82•Onsite

About The Position

The AI Research Intern will join Future Forward, Intuitive’s advanced concepts group, and report to an engineering lead. The intern will own an open-ended research and prototyping project focused on AI for the next generation of robotic-assisted surgery. Potential areas include supervised autonomy and automation for robotic-assisted surgery, and AI that helps care teams deliver care more consistently and efficiently. The project will draw on areas such as computer vision, generative AI, robotics, and agentic AI, with its scope determined by the intern’s background and team priorities. A successful internship will produce a working prototype, evidence of its performance, and findings that the team can build on. The internship is full-time, approximately 40 hours per week, for 10–12 weeks, starting in May or June. Specific start dates are shared during recruiting. Applicants must be currently enrolled in and returning to an accredited degree-seeking program after the internship. The role is fully onsite and has a day shift. Compensation is hourly and varies by region: $73–$82 per hour in Region 1 and $62–$70 per hour in Region 2. The compensation package also includes benefits and a housing allowance; total program compensation depends on the internship duration and factors including relevant skills and experience, academic program, year in school, and location.

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.
Evidence of taking a loosely defined problem to a result, demonstrated through publications, open-source work, or projects used by others.
Sound experimental practice, including the ability to set up fair comparisons and distinguish real improvements 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, for 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 new problems in surgery and the operating room.
Build working prototypes and evaluate them against clear baselines.
Collaborate with researchers, engineers, and clinical experts.
Document results and present findings, and contribute to publications or patent filings when warranted.