Student Researcher (AI Foundation Models Infrastructure - Seed Infra) - 2026 Start (PhD)

Location:
Seattle

Team:
Technology

Employment Type:
Intern

Job Code:
A227501A

Responsibilities

About the team
The Seed Infrastructures team oversees the distributed training, reinforcement learning framework, high-performance inference, and heterogeneous hardware compilation technologies for AI foundation models.

We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship in 2026. PhD Internships at our Company aim to provide students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, and to the organization's future plans and emerging technologies.

PhD internships at Our Company provides students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, and to the organization's future plans and emerging technologies. Our dynamic internship experience blends hands-on learning, enriching community-building and development events, and collaboration with industry experts.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early. Please state your availability clearly in your resume (Start date, End date).

Responsibilities

• As an Infrastructure Intern, you may work on one or more of the following areas:
• Design and optimize large-scale distributed training systems (e.g., data/model/pipeline parallelism, memory efficiency, fault tolerance)
• Contribute to reinforcement learning training frameworks and large-scale post-training systems
• Improve inference performance, latency, and throughput for foundation models
• Develop compiler or runtime optimizations for heterogeneous hardware (GPU/accelerator)
• Work on system-level performance analysis, profiling, and bottleneck diagnosis
• Build tooling and automation to improve developer productivity and system reliability

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Currently pursuing a PhD degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related technical fields
• Strong programming skills in Python and/or C++
• Solid understanding of systems, distributed computing, machine learning systems, or performance optimization
• Experience with one or more of the following: Distributed training frameworks (e.g., PyTorch FSDP, Megatron-style parallelism); Reinforcement learning training systems; GPU programming (CUDA, Triton) or compiler technologies; Large-scale inference optimization; Performance profiling and systems debugging
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work in fast-paced research-driven environments

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working on large-scale ML systems or infrastructure projects
• Contributions to open-source ML systems or performance tooling
• Publications in ML systems, distributed systems, or related areas (a plus but not required)

Job Information

【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Hourly) - Campus Intern

The hourly rate range for this position in the selected city is $57- $57.

Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Interns have day one access to health insurance, life insurance, wellbeing benefits and more. Interns also receive 10 paid holidays per year and paid sick time (56 hours if hired in first half of year, 40 if hired in second half of year). Interns who are not working 100% remote may also be eligible for housing allowance.

The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:
Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:

1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;

2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and

3. Exercising sound judgment.

About Doubao (Seed)

Founded in 2023, the ByteDance Doubao (Seed) Team, is dedicated to pioneering advanced AI foundation models. Our goal is to lead in cutting-edge research and drive technological and societal advancements.

With a strong commitment to AI, our research areas span deep learning, reinforcement learning, Language, Vision, Audio, AI Infra and AI Safety. Our team has labs and research positions across China, Singapore, and the US.

Why Join ByteDance

Inspiring creativity is at the core of ByteDance's mission. Our innovative products are built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and enrich life - a mission we work towards every day.

As ByteDancers, we strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our Company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.

Diversity & Inclusion

ByteDance is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At ByteDance, our mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.

Reasonable Accommodation

ByteDance is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/RA-request