AI Research Intern, Apptronik
Foundation Models
5 days a week in office
Humanoid robot developer
Job no longer available
Humanoid robot developer
201-500 employees
Job no longer available
5 days a week in office
201-500 employees
Company mission
To leverage robotics to improve universal quality of life.
Role
Who you are
- MUST be an MS or PhD student enrolled in an accredited academic program during the internship term located in the United States. (New graduates not enrolled in an accredited program for Fall 2025 are ineligible.)
- Pursuing a degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Engineering, Robotics, or a related field
- Demonstrated track record. The portfolio can consist of: code, technical writing (white papers or blog posts), peer reviewed papers in Tier-1 Machine Learning, Robotics and Computer Vision
- Expert in ML and fine-tuning large language models
- Demonstrated experience in deep learning and transformers models
- Experience in developing and managing large-scale machine learning systems
- Experience building training codebases for large-scale video or multimodal foundation models
- Expertise optimizing efficiency of distributed training systems and/or inference systems
- Passion for making production grade agentic frameworks with cutting edge technology
What the job involves
- You will join a team developing state-of-the-art general-purpose robots designed to operate in human spaces and with human tools.
- It is designed to work alongside humans, mobilize to human spaces, and manipulate the world around it
- As an inter on the Apptronik AI Robotics Foundation Models (AIRfm) team, you will build a new generation of world-class large behavior and reasoning models for multi-resolution decision making in Robotics and build production grade robotics solutions and deliver this to customers
- Implement core infrastructure and conduct research to build Vision-Language-Action Models for Physical AI. Solve essential problems in curating pre-training data and effect of post-training data, and finally RL based model improvement. You will also develop metrics and scaling laws for physical intelligence
- Interns should expect to work Monday-Friday, up to 40 hours per week, typically between 9am-5pm. Specific team norms around working hours will be communicated by your manager
- This role touches all aspects of the multimodal model pipeline. Work may include model training, data pipeline development, evaluation, finetuning and RL training as well as tooling and support
- You will work on systems for training multimodal transformers at scale for robotics:
- Inference optimization and distillation for real-time generation
- Methods for native multimodal generation in language models
- Quantitative evals for physical accuracy and intelligence
- Scaling law science for multimodal pretraining and adding new modalities
- Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer
- Must be able to lift 15 pounds at times
- Vision to read printed materials and a computer screen
- Hearing and speech to communicate
Application process
- This position is expected to start in-person around May/June 2025 and continue through the entire Summer (i.e. through Aug/Sep 2025). We ask for a minimum of 10 weeks
Our take
Apptronik specialises in the development of advanced robotic systems designed to enhance and automate various industrial processes. The company's flagship product, The Apollo humanoid robot, is engineered to perform low-skill, physically demanding tasks that are repetitive and crucial for manufacturing efficiency.
The company's expertise extends beyond robotics into the broader realm of artificial intelligence and automation, contributing to its rapid growth and increasing prominence in the tech industry. Apptronik's products are designed to integrate seamlessly into existing workflows, offering solutions that address labour shortages and improve operational efficiency.
The company's partnership with Mercedes-Benz marks a significant milestone for both companies. This agreement to pilot Apollo robots in Mercedes-Benz manufacturing facilities represents Apptronik's first publicly announced commercial deployment. This is an exciting opportunity for the company, and as the industry continues to evolve, Apptronik is poised to leverage its technology to meet increasing demands in the robotics and automation sectors.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
35% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
Feb 2026
$520m
SERIES A
Mar 2025
$403m
SERIES A
Total funding: $937.9m
Company HQ
North Burnet, Austin, TX
Leadership
Jeff Cardenas
(Co-Founder & CEO)Received a Master of Science in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas. Founded multiple startups and non-profits. Previously worked at IC2 Institute at UT Austin and in Technology at Deloitte Consulting.
Dr. Nick Paine
(Co-Founder & CTO)B.S., M.S. and Ph.D in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas in Austin. Previously a member of the NASA-JSC DARPA Robotics Challenge team which developed high-performance hardware and software for robotic control.
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