Research Engineer Intern (Fall 2026)
Center for Ai Safety
San Francisco, CA, USA
USD 9,700-19k / year
Posted on Mar 9, 2026
Introduction
The Center for AI Safety (CAIS) is a leading research and field-building organization on a mission to reduce societal-scale risks from AI. Alongside our sister organization, the CAIS Action Fund, we tackle the toughest AI issues with a mix of technical, societal and policy solutions.
As a research engineer intern here, you will work very closely with our researchers on projects in areas such as AI security, machine ethics, AI alignment, and benchmarking AI risks. We will assign you a dedicated mentor throughout your internship, but we will ultimately be treating you as a colleague. By this we mean, you will have the opportunity to debate for your own experiments or projects, and defend their impact. You will plan and run experiments, conduct code reviews, and work in a small team to create a publication with outsized impact. You will leverage our internal compute cluster to run experiments at scale on large language models.
Timing
This application is for the full-time fall internship position. Applications are due by May 29, 2026.
You might be a good fit if you:
- Are able to read an ML paper, understand the key result, and understand how it fits into the broader literature.
- Are comfortable setting up, launching, and debugging ML experiments.
- Are familiar with relevant frameworks and libraries (e.g., pytorch).
- Communicate clearly and promptly with teammates.
- Take ownership of your individual part in a project.
- Have co-authored a ML paper in a top conference.
Know someone who could be a great fit for this role? Submit their details through our Referral Form. If we end up hiring your referral, you’ll receive a $1,500 bonus once they’ve been with CAIS for 90 days.
The Center for AI Safety is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, medical condition, marital status, military or veteran status, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws. In alignment with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment.
If you require a reasonable accommodation during the application or interview process, please contact contact@safe.ai.
We value diversity and encourage individuals from all backgrounds to apply.
9700 - 19000 USD a year
This internship is unpaid; however, CAIS provides the above stipend to assist with academic pursuits and living expenses. The stipend is subject to tax.