2026/2027 PhD / Master's Residency - Machine Learning / Software Engineering (Early Stage Project)

X Development, LLC; Mountain View (CA); Hybrid; USD 109,000 - 157,000; Full time

Job summary

X Development, LLC in Mountain View, CA — an AI Residency Internship — seeks a Masters/PhD student to develop neural reasoning capabilities for climate sustainability and finance. You will work with LLMs, transformers, foundation models, and simulations to deliver real-world impact.

Expect cross-disciplinary collaboration and practical prototyping. You will build data pipelines, model reasoning systems, and deploy AI tools across projects, while collaborating with Alphabet and academia.

Qualifications

• Masters or PhD student in STEM (financial engineering, risk management, OR, math/statistics).
• Strong knowledge of financial and probabilistic theory applied to markets.
• 5+ years of experience with simulations of real-world phenomena.
• Understanding of decarbonization and carbon markets.
• Fluent in Python, C++, SQL, Matlab/R, SAS, and data visualization.

Responsibilities

• Explore large-scale planning and optimization problems with experts.
• Build models and generative optimization algorithms for real-world tasks.
• Translate neural modeling expertise to solve climate/finance problems.
• Develop AI prototypes for sustainability and finance applications.
• Create data pipelines and perform exploratory data analysis on big data.

Skills

Python

C++

SQL

Data visualization

Distributed computing (GCP/AWS/AZURE/H

Education

Masters or PhD student in STEM

Science/math/engineering degree

Tools

GCP

AWS

Azure

HPC clusters

Job description

2 0 2 6 / 2 0 2 7 P h D / M a s t e r ' s R e s i d e n c y - M a c h i n e L e a r n i n g / S o f t w a r e E n g i n e e r i n g ( E a r l y S t a g e P r o j e c t )

Internship Mountain View, CA

What you'll be working on:

In this role you will have the opportunity to tackle climate change by developing novel neural reasoning capabilities that enable stakeholders to target their mitigation efforts. You will leverage your skills in LLMs, neural modeling, transformers, foundation models and simulation to make a real world impact. To power this work you will combine diverse datasets and develop tools based on language models, geospatial foundation models, reasoning infrastructures and simulations of natural and socioeconomic systems.

How you will make 10x impact:

• Explore the potential of leading edge reasoning models to solve large-scale planning and optimization problems in collaboration with human experts.
• Leverage neural/foundation modeling techniques to build models of and generative optimization algorithms for a wide range of real-world modeling tasks
• Translate your expertise in neural modeling to the rest of the team and apply it to solve real-world engineering problems related to climate sustainability and the carbon economy
• Collaborate with X project team to experiment and build novel insights to finance, risk management, portfolio management, and derivatives valuation problems
• Rapidly develop prototypes of artificial intelligence, machine learning models applied to sustainability and finance problems
• Apply the latest in data science techniques to build and deploy data pipelines and exploratory data analysis on large-scale datasets
• Develop value chain maps, evaluate costs and revenues to assess and recommend areas in which to de-risk the project
• Work cross-functionally with experts across, X, Alphabet, and academia
• Engage with the intern community during the program (attending tech talks, colloquium, and learning moonshot thinking), and most importantly HAVE FUN!

This project aims to push the limits of science and modeling as we know them and to prove how ML can radically accelerate our understanding of the world

• Location: X's headquarters in Mountain View, CA
• Duration: a flexible 4 mo. to 1 year program based on project team needs and your availability

Throughout your AI Residency you can expect:

• To be embedded into one of our confidential or public X projects
• To get paid competitively and receive benefits
• To be a part of a lively community of AI and ML Residents
• To attend tech-talks with AI leaders from across X

What you should have:

• Masters or PhD student in a STEM field (financial engineering, risk management, operations research, math/statistics or other quantitative field)
• Strong knowledge of financial and probabilistic theory, as applied to financial markets
• 5 years experience with simulations of real-world phenomena (e.g., physical, biological, ecological, sociological)
• Understanding of decarbonization and carbon removal technologies, as well as carbon markets
• Fluent in Python, C++, SQL, databases, scripting, Matlab/R, SAS, and data visualization
• Strong knowledge of statistical or machine learning modeling techniques, including Large Language Models.
• Experience in using distributed computing resources, such as GCP, AWS, Azure or HPC clusters
• Very strong strategy and analytical skills. Ability to gather and analyze large quantities of information, and turn them into insightful business recommendations
• Good at problem stating and problem solving, and turning ambiguous problem spaces into radical solutions. Must be able to break down problems independently
• Can do attitude, willing to learn new tools and content to become an effective thought partner with project teams
• Excellent communication skills i.e experience writing strategy docs, experience delivering presentations, and a general openness to liaise with senior external partners
• Motivated by making the world a better place through technology, and wanting to be part of a team that makes this happen

It’d be great if you also had these:

• Degree in a science, math, or engineering field
• An ability to thrive on ambiguity, setting own goals and effectively delivering them in a fast-changing environment
• Adept at influencing without authority, working cross-functionally with different teams in order to drive decision making

The US base salary range for this position is $109,000 - $157,000 + benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your location during the hiring process.

Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include benefits.

An Equal Opportunity Workplace

At X, we don't just accept difference - we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products and our community. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.