Summer Intern – Machine Learning for Animal Assessment

Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC); Hamilton; On-site; NZD 12,357,000 - 16,476,000; Part time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid internship

Job summary

Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC) invites students to join a paid summer internship focused on machine learning for dairy animal assessment. The project covers capturing video and spatial data on farms, 3D feature extraction, and building pipelines to generate usable outputs for future research and product development.

The role requires on-site work at LIC Newstead in Hamilton, with time spent on farm data collection and on documentation.

Qualifications

• Legally permitted to work in New Zealand.
• NZQA level 6-10 degree in a relevant field.
• Studying or have studied science/tech/engineering/design/business at a NZ tertiary education institute.
• Be able to work on-site at LIC Newstead Hamilton for the duration of the internship.
• Paid internship: $29.90 per hour; 10 weeks; minimum 30 hours/week; maximum 400 hours; to 31 March 2027.

Responsibilities

• Assist with on-farm video capture.
• Annotate key visual features and prepare datasets for model development.
• Develop a prototype workflow turning video or spatial data into usable analytical outputs.
• Organise and validate captured footage.
• Progress the project toward a practical proof of concept.

Skills

Python programming

Computer vision

Machine learning

Image/video analysis

Applied AI

Data handling

Data cleaning

Exploratory analysis

Annotation workflows

Written communication

Dairy systems curiosity

On-farm data capture

3D data capture

Education

NZQA level 6-10 degree

Tools

Pandas

Polars

NumPy

Job description

LIC’s Research and Development (R&D) group is driving innovation to keep New Zealand farmers and their businesses at the forefront of the global dairy industry. Our world-class team is actively engaged in cutting-edge work across genetics, genomics, reproduction, animal health, statistics, and machine learning.

In partnership with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, we’re offering summer internships that provide hands‑on experience across a diverse range of scientific and technical areas—from genetic analysis to data science and modelling—leveraging both in-house and cloud-based computing platform

Project Details

Project Title

Machine Learning Feature Advancement for Dairy Animal Assessment

Project Scope

The successful student will contribute to an early‑stage project exploring whether computer vision and machine learning can support consistent, scalable assessment of live dairy animal features. The project will focus on capturing video and spatial data from animals, rendering and analysing physical features in three dimensions, and assessing how well machine learning models can generate useful outputs from that data. This work sits within broader interest in improving feature capture and measurement, using scalable technology to make animal assessment more consistent, repeatable, and practical for future research and product development.

Your Contribution

• Help progress the project toward a practical proof of concept.
• Assist with on‑farm video capture.
• Organise and validate captured footage.
• Annotate key visual features and prepare datasets for model development.
• Develop a prototype workflow that turns video or spatial data into usable analytical outputs

Expected Outputs

The project provides time‑boxed contribution to an important early‑stage machine vision project. The student’s work will help establish whether relatively accessible capture technologies, such as multi‑camera phone‑based capture, can provide data of sufficient quality to support automated or semi‑automated assessment of dairy animal features. The project may also generate reusable datasets, annotation processes, and prototype code that future R&D work can build on.

Key Skills Required

• Python programming experience
• Interest in computer vision, machine learning, image/video analysis, or applied AI.
• Basic understanding of data handling, data cleaning, and exploratory analysis; experience with tools such as Pandas, Polars, NumPy, or similar would be useful
• Ability to learn annotation and validation workflows for image or video datasets
• Clear written communication and documentation skills
• Curiosity about dairy systems, animal breeding, phenotyping, or agricultural technology
• Willingness to spend a portion of time on working dairy farms for data capture, following LIC health and safety and animal handling requirements.
• Interest in 3D data, spatial capture, photogrammetry, LiDAR, or model‑based feature extraction would be an advantage but is not essential.

To Be Eligible For These Internships Students Must Be

• Legally permitted to work in New Zealand.
• Studying, or have studied, an undergraduate or postgraduate qualification at NZQA level 6-10 If study has been completed, the final semester should have ended within the last 12 months.
• Studying, or have studied, science, technology, engineering, design or business at a New Zealand tertiary education institute.
• Be able to work on-site at our Head Office in Newstead Hamilton for the duration of the internship

Application Information

If you have worked for LIC before, you can still apply if

• your job was part‑time or temporary
• you only held one R&D Experience Grant internship with LIC.

The internship is a paid opportunity offering $29.90 per hour for a period of 10 weeks. You will be required to work a minimum of 30 hours per week, up to a maximum of 400 hours to be completed by 31 March 2027. Participation in the project will be based physically at LIC. At the conclusion of the internship, you will be required to deliver a presentation and submit a report.

Applications close:

13 September 2026 or earlier if the roles are filled