Research Intern – AI Incubation

What you can expect

Zoom’s AI Incubation team is looking for a PhD Research Intern to dive into the next wave of LLM innovation. You will work alongside a world-class group of PhDs and applied scientists, contributing to high-impact projects in post-training, reinforcement learning (RL), and federated AI.

As an intern, you won't just be watching from the sidelines. You will own a specific research project, conduct experiments at scale, and help develop the breakthroughs that power the next generation of the Zoom AI Companion. This is a unique opportunity to see how frontier AI research is translated into a product used by millions.

About the team

The AI Incubation team is a high-impact applied research group known for building one of the industry's best-performing federated AI systems. We operate at the frontier of:

• Agentic Intelligence: Moving beyond chat to models that "do."

• Federated AI: Privacy-preserving, edge-to-cloud learning across diverse model ecosystems (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google).

• Advanced Alignment: Pushing RLHF, DPO, and RLAIF to new heights of reasoning and reliability.

Responsibilities

• Execute Research Projects: Design and implement experiments in areas like LLM fine-tuning, preference optimization (DPO/PPO), or distributed federated learning.

• Prototype & Evaluate: Build and benchmark new model architectures or training recipes to improve reasoning, personalization, and safety.

• Collaborate: Work closely with senior scientists to refine research hypotheses and troubleshoot large-scale training runs.

• Document & Present: Synthesize your findings into internal reports or potential publications, presenting your work to the broader AI organization.

• Stay Curious: Keep pace with the latest ArXiv drops and open-source developments to ensure our methods remain state-of-the-art.

What we’re looking for

PhD Candidate

• Currently enrolled in a PhD program in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or a related quantitative field.

Strong Technical Foundation

• Solid programming skills with hands-on experience in PyTorch.

• Bonus points for experience with modern LLM tooling such as Hugging Face Transformers, DeepSpeed, or FlashAttention.

Relevant Research Experience

• Experience in at least one of the following areas:

  • LLM post-training, including SFT or RLHF

  • Federated learning

  • Multimodal modeling

  • Agentic or workflow-based AI systems

Research Mindset

• Proven ability to solve open-ended research problems, demonstrated through:

  • Publications at top-tier conferences (for example NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR)

  • Meaningful open-source contributions

  • Advanced research projects or impactful academic work

Collaboration and Communication

• Able to clearly explain complex technical ideas.

• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, iterative research environment and collaborating across teams.

Salary Range or On Target Earnings:

Minimum:

Maximum:

In addition to the base salary and/or OTE listed Zoom has a Total Direct Compensation philosophy that takes into consideration; base salary, bonus and equity value.

Note: Starting pay will be based on a number of factors and commensurate with qualifications & experience.

We also have a location based compensation structure;  there may be a different range for candidates in this and other locations.

Ways of Working
Our structured hybrid approach is centered around our offices and remote work environments. The work style of each role, Hybrid, Remote, or In-Person is indicated in the job description/posting.

Benefits
As part of our award-winning workplace culture and commitment to delivering happiness, our benefits program offers a variety of perks, benefits, and options to help employees maintain their physical, mental, emotional, and financial health; support work-life balance; and contribute to their community in meaningful ways. Click Learn for more information.

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