Data Science Intern

Epic Games; Cary (AR); On-site; USD 18,000 - 30,000; Full time

Job summary

Epic Games is seeking a Data Science Intern to join the Ecosystem Security team, focusing on fraud detection and abuse prevention. You will work with a mentor and analysts to explore data, build models, and evaluate impact on protecting players.

You’ll develop skills in data analysis, ML, and software development while collaborating across teams in a fast-moving environment.

Qualifications

• Experience with Python for data analysis, pandas and scikit-learn preferred.
• Ability to write SQL against large datasets to pull and shape data.
• A grounding in statistics and machine learning fundamentals, including classification and evaluation metrics beyond accuracy.
• Desire to develop strong data science and software development skills.
• Genuine curiosity about adversarial problems, especially how to game a system.
• Good interpersonal and communication skills, with ability to communicate technical findings within a team.
• Ability to react and respond to constructive feedback.
• Flexible approach to rapidly evolving problems, and comfort with messy or sparsely labeled data.
• Nice to have: exposure to anomaly detection, graph or network analysis, text classification and NLP, or sequence and time-series modeling.
• Nice to have: interest in games, live services, or online trust and safety.

Responsibilities

• Explore large datasets to characterize how forms of abuse work.
• Build and evaluate ML models that detect abusive activity at scale.
• Translate investigations into model features and measure results against outcomes.
• Build dashboards to monitor signals and track performance.
• Document data sources, methodology, and findings and present results to the team.

Skills

Python for data analysis

SQL querying

Statistics and ML fundamentals

Data science and software development

Tools

pandas

scikit-learn

Job description

WHAT MAKES US EPIC?

At the core of Epic’s success are talented, passionate people. Epic prides itself on creating a collaborative, welcoming, and creative environment. Whether it’s building award-winning games or crafting engine technology that enables others to make visually stunning interactive experiences, we’re always innovating.

Being Epic means being a part of a team that continually strives to do right by our community and users. We’re constantly innovating to raise the bar of engine and game development.

ECOSEC

What We Do

Our ECOSEC team provides a safer experience for Epic's users. We work across multiple products and services to improve technology and craft transparent policies so our players and users can have positive experiences on our platforms.

DATA SCIENCE INTERN

What You'll Do

We are looking for a Data Science Intern to join the Ecosystem Security team supporting initiatives related to fraud and abuse detection. As part of the EcoSec team, you will be given a detection problem to own as part of our development cycle. You will work with your data science mentor and the operations analysts who investigate these cases to explore the data, build a model, and measure its impact on how we protect players.

In this role, you will

• Explore large transaction, account, gameplay, and behavioral datasets to characterize how a specific form of abuse actually works
• Build and evaluate statistical or machine learning models that detect abusive activity at scale
• Partner with operations analysts to translate their investigation heuristics into model features, and measure your results against real outcomes like confirmed cases and false positive rates
• Build dashboards or monitoring so the team can track your signal without an analyst in the loop
• Document your data sources, methodology, and findings so the work can be extended after your internship, and present your results to the team

What we're looking for

• Experience with Python for data analysis, pandas and scikit-learn preferred
• Ability to write SQL against large datasets to pull and shape your own data
• A grounding in statistics and machine learning fundamentals, including classification and evaluation metrics beyond accuracy
• A desire to develop strong data science and software development skills
• Genuine curiosity about adversarial problems, specifically how and why people find ways to game a system
• Good interpersonal and communication skills, with demonstrated ability to communicate technical findings within a team
• The ability to react and respond effectively to constructive feedback
• A flexible approach to rapidly evolving problems, and comfort working with messy or sparsely labeled data
• Nice to have: exposure to any of anomaly detection, graph or network analysis, text classification and NLP, or sequence and time-series modeling
• Nice to have: interest in games, live services, or online trust and safety

This internship has a flexible start date in 2027. Recruitment will be ongoing until teams find an ideal match. Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the posting location for the duration of the internship. For more information about Epic’s Early Career Program, visit epicgames.com/earlycareers. This is going to be Epic!

ABOUT US

Epic Games is a leading interactive entertainment company. For over 30 years we've been making award-winning games and engine technology that empowers others to make visually stunning games and 3D content that bring environments to life like never before. Epic's award-winning Unreal Engine technology not only provides game developers the ability to build high-fidelity, interactive experiences for PC, console, mobile, and VR, it is also a tool being embraced by content creators across a variety of industries such as media and entertainment, automotive, and architectural design. As we continue to build our Engine technology and develop remarkable games, we strive to build teams of world-class talent.

Like what you hear? Come be a part of something Epic!

Epic Games deeply values diverse teams and an inclusive work culture, and we are proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. Learn more about our Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Policy here.