Internship - Software Engineering

RAI Institute; Zürich; On-site; CHF 17,000 - 29,000; Full time

Job summary

RAI Institute is offering a six-month, full-time internship in Zürich for Master’s students in Robotics, CS, or related fields. You’ll contribute to cutting-edge robotics infrastructure projects, choosing between On-Robot Deployment or Off-Robot Training Infrastructure tracks.

Pursuing a Master’s degree with strong fundamentals in software engineering and systems programming will help you excel in a fast-paced, research-driven environment.

Qualifications

• Pursuing a Master's (MS) in Robotics, CS, or related field.
• Strong fundamentals in system design and numerical or algorithmic computation.
• Solid software engineering background for real-time/embedded environments.

Responsibilities

• Develop real-time C++ software for robotic hardware deployments.
• Contribute to on-robot deployment or off-robot training infra projects.
• Collaborate with researchers and engineers to advance robotics infrastructure.

Skills

Modern C++

Systems design

Numerical computation

Real-time/embedded

Education

Master's degree in Robotics/CS/Computational Science & Engineering

Tools

ROS 2

CUDA

Python

Warp/Jax

Jetson

Job description

Our Mission

Our mission is to solve the most important and fundamental challenges in AI and Robotics to enable future generations of intelligent machines that will help us all live better lives.

Our Mission

Our mission is to solve the most important and fundamental challenges in AI and Robotics to enable future generations of intelligent machines that will help us all live better lives.

What we are looking for

Master's students looking to work full-time for an extended period (~6 months) in an invigorating environment where researchers and engineers are building the future of robotics infrastructure and systems. If you have a deep passion for writing clean, performant software and want to build the computational foundations that power advanced robotics, you will want to join us!

Prior robotics experience is not required—we are looking for exceptional software talent with strong fundamentals in system design and numerical or algorithmic computation. Depending on your background, your project will focus on one of two primary tracks: On-Robot Deployment or Off-Robot Training Infrastructure.

Track A: On-Robot Deployment

• Write robust, low-latency modern C++ code for real-time execution directly on robotic hardware
• Implement and optimize for embedded platforms like the Jetson family of devices
• Profile, benchmark, and eliminate performance bottlenecks in resource-constrained Linux environments
• Design and build clean software components using modern software engineering practices and ROS 2

Track B: Off-Robot Training Infrastructure

• Design and build scalable software infrastructure for GPU based simulation and model training
• Optimize parallel compute pipelines, rendering processes, and data ingestion to accelerate research cycles
• Implement SOTA reinforcement learning algorithms to improve training performance

What You'll Need

• Currently pursuing a Master's (MS) degree in Robotics, Computer Science, Computational Science & Engineering, or a related field
• Prior software engineering experience (e.g., industry internships, significant open-source contributions, or complex project work)
• For On-Robot Deployment: Exceptional core software engineering foundations in Modern C++, system architecture, data structures, and memory management (C++ or another systems language is strictly required for this track)
• For Off-Robot Infrastructure: Strong systems programming skills (C++, Python, etc.) with a deep interest in high-performance computing, distributed systems, or large-scale data processing. Experience with high level GPU programming languages (Warp, Jax) is a plus.

Areas of Special Interest

While strong core software engineering fundamentals in systems programming are required, no specific domain expertise beyond that is necessary. However, if you happen to possess experience in any single one of the following areas, it would be a massive plus and highly relevant to our current projects:

• Hardware Acceleration & Graphics: Experience with GPU programming, CUDA, parallel processing, or rendering pipelines (e.g., Gaussian splatting).
• Physics & Simulation: Familiarity with computational physics, contact models, rigid body dynamics, or physics engines (e.g., Nvidia Newton).
• Machine Learning Systems: Experience optimizing or implementing embedded neural network inference and hardware-level ML acceleration.
• Reinforcement Learning Algorithms: Experience working with and implementing RL algorithms from state of the art papers.

We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.