Research Intern

Rhoda Ai
Mountain View, US

Who this role is best for

PhD candidates with deep learning experience and robotics research background will find this project-specific, full-time internship in Mountain View suits their career trajectory.

Best fit for

  • PhD students in Robotics or Machine Learning with strong coding skills and research independence
    — “Currently pursuing (or recently completed) a PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Machine Learning, or a related field”
  • Candidates with experience in simulation environments and robot learning who seek hands-on impact
    — “Experience with one or more of: video/generative models, VLMs or multimodal architectures, robot learning, simulation environments”

Things to consider

  • The internship may require a full-time commitment, with potential for a full-time offer post-internship
    — “We're looking for research interns — strong PhD students ... with the goal of a potential full-time offer at the end of the internship”

How to stand out

  • Highlight your experience with production-quality research code, not just prototyping
    — “Solid software engineering skills — comfortable writing production-quality research code”
  • Emphasize your ability to contribute to long-term, complex robotics systems, not just single projects
    — “Our robots are designed to be generalists capable of operating in complex, real-world environments”
  • Showcase your mentorship experience or ability to work independently on research tasks
    — “Track record of independent research — publications are a plus but not required”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • contributing to major research projects
  • working closely with mentors and research teams
Typical background
PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Machine Learningstrong Masters/BS candidates with equivalent research experience

Skills & requirements

Required

Deep LearningRoboticsSoftware EngineeringVideo/generative ModelsMultimodal/vlm ArchitecturesSimulation EnvironmentsSlam/navigation

Preferred

Publications

Stack & domain

Deep LearningPythonRustVideo/generative ModelsVlms Or Multimodal ArchitecturesRobot LearningSimulation EnvironmentsSlam/navigationLeadershipCommunicationFinanceHealthcareQuantum ComputingRobotics

About the role

Original posting from Rhoda Ai via Ashby

At Rhoda AI, we’re building the next generation of generalist intelligent robots. We own the full robotics stack from high-performance hardware and robot systems to the infrastructure and state-of-the-art foundation world models that control our robots. Our robots are designed to be generalists capable of operating in complex, real-world environments and handling long-tail edge cases, made possible by our cutting edge research and end-to-end system design. We've raised over $450M and are investing aggressively in model research, infrastructure, hardware development, and manufacturing scale-up to make generalist robotics a reality.

We're looking for research interns — strong PhD students (as well as exceptional Masters/BS students) close to graduation — to work directly with our team on major research and engineering efforts, with the goal of a potential full-time offer at the end of the internship.

WHAT YOU'LL WORK ON

Your work will be project-specific, scoped to the needs of the major project you're embedded in at the time. Across the team, that spans large-scale video-based robot policy learning, multimodal/VLM architectures, simulation, and robotics-adjacent systems like SLAM and navigation — but your exact focus will be defined by your mentor based on what the project needs.

You'll be contributing directly to a major, ongoing research project rather than working in isolation, and will partner closely with your mentor and the broader research team throughout.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

  • Currently pursuing (or recently completed) a PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Machine Learning, or a related field — close to graduation preferred; strong Masters/BS candidates with equivalent research experience will also be considered
  • Strong foundation in deep learning, with hands-on experience training and debugging large models
  • Solid software engineering skills — comfortable writing production-quality research code, not just notebooks
  • Experience with one or more of: video/generative models, VLMs or multimodal architectures, robot learning, simulation environments (e.g., MuJoCo, Isaac Sim, Habitat), or SLAM/navigation
  • Track record of independent research — publications are a plus but not required, especially for candidates focused on applied/major-project work
  • Comfortable working in a fast-moving, resource-constrained startup research environment

THE INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCE

  • Direct collaboration with an assigned mentor from day one, with regular guidance and feedback
  • Access to compute resources scoped to your project
  • A structured interview process (domain knowledge + coding), a mid-internship check-in, and an end-of-internship evaluation that can lead to a full-time offer
  • The opportunity to work on problems that matter to a real generalist-robotics product, not just a standalone research exercise

Source: Rhoda Ai careers (Ashby)

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