Lab Automation AI Intern - Part-time, Immediate Hire or Spring Semester, Local

Upside Foods, Inc.; Emeryville (CA); On-site; USD 28,000 - 40,000; Full time

Job summary

UPSIDE Foods, based in Emeryville, CA, is seeking an AI Intern for the Enterprise Intelligence team to bridge biology and software development. You will collaborate with data scientists and IT engineers to deploy high-throughput workflows and advance AI-enabled manufacturing for cultivated meat, gaining hands-on experience across programming, analysis, and instrumentation.

The sixteen-week internship offers ownership from conception to deployment, with 20 hours per week and on-site presence at

Qualifications

• Ownership instincts; able to drive projects and navigate cross-functional objectives.
• Hands-on experience with scientific instrumentation and molecular cloning workflows; versed in bioprocessing and cell biology concepts.
• Nice to have: experience using AI coding tools (e.g., Claude Code).
• Must be able to be on-site more than 2 days a week at our facility near Berkeley, CA.
• Startup mindset; able to translate stakeholder requirements into MVPs and iterative feedback loops.
• Preferred: currently pursuing Masters or Bachelors in Biotechnology, Biochemical Engineering, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, or similar.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with stakeholders to envision and design lab automation workflows that drive increased business value.
• Use AI programming tools to develop and encode new high throughput workflows.
• Integrate technical solutions within organizational tools and data sources, and leverage dashboards or lower-tech solutions when appropriate.
• Work closely with IT and Data Platform Engineering teammates to ensure infrastructure support.
• 20 hrs/wk concurrent with school.

Skills

Ownership

Lab instrumentation

Molecular cloning

Bioprocessing

Cell biology

AI coding

On-site

Startup mindset

Biotech degree

Education

Biotechnology / Biochemical / Bioengineering degree

Job description

UPSIDE Foods is the world's leading cultivated meat company. We’re building a new food system that moves meat forward by rethinking it from the source. By growing real meat from animal cells, we give people the choice to enjoy the meat they love without killing animals. Our work directly addresses the environmental and ethical impacts of the modern food system while supporting global food and nutrition security. It’s a vision legendary conservationist Jane Goodall called "one of the biggest ideas offering planetary hope."

Based in Emeryville, California, UPSIDE Foods has achieved numerous industry-defining milestones, including making the first cultivated meat to be green-lit by both the FDA and the USDA and sold in the United States. Our team has won numerous industry awards, including TIME World’s Top GreenTech Companies 2026, New York Times’ Good Tech Awards, FastCo’s Next Big Thing in Tech, and the Best and Brightest Companies to Work For.

To date, UPSIDE Foods has raised more than $600 million in funding from a diverse group of leading U.S. and global investors, including Cargill, SoftBank, Temasek, Tyson and Whole Foods.

About this internship:

At UPSIDE Foods, we’re turning the promise of cultivated meat into a delicious, nutritious reality, and we’re using AI to do it, from faster R&D to scaled manufacturing and commercial. As an AI Intern within the Enterprise Intelligence team, you’ll join a tight‑knit group of data scientists and IT & software developers who partner with our sci/tech teams to use advanced computing to make meat. Your work will advance our AI and operational technology portfolio and become central to the worldwide scale of cultivated meat, contributing to a sustainable global food system.

This Internship is a chance to deliver full life-cycle high throughput deployments, from stakeholder design to shipping new services. You’ll start with exploration and white‑boarding use‑cases with stakeholders. You will develop operational high throughput workflows that dramatically increase our screening capacity. Expect to work hands on with cutting edge cultivated meat science at the intersection of programming, analysis, and instrumentation. You’ll own meaningful projects from conception to continuous deployment and feedback loops that drive long term business value.

This sixteen week internship will give you a front‑row seat to how AI and OT integrate with mammalian and avian cell biology, and by the end, you’ll have deployed two or more applications that drive meaningful value and enable the future of food.

What you'll do

• Collaborate with stakeholders to envision and design lab automation workflows that drive increased business value.
• Use AI programming tools to develop and encode new high throughput workflows.
• Integrate technical solutions within organizational tools and data sources, and leverage dashboards or lower-tech solutions when appropriate.
• Work closely with IT and Data Platform Engineering teammates to ensure infrastructure support.
• 20 hrs/wk concurrent with school.
  
  

Qualifications

• Strong ownership instincts. You’re able to drive projects forward and navigate messy cross-functional objectives.
• Hands on experience with scientific instrumentation and molecular cloning workflows. Experienced with bioprocessing and cell biology concepts.
• Nice to have: Experience using AI coding, e.g. Claude Code, to finish a project.
• Must be able to be on-site >2-days a week at our facility near Berkeley, CA.
• Start up mentality. You’re able to gather stakeholder requirements and quickly translate them into MVPs and recur feedback-improvement loops.
• Preference for current Masters or Bachelors students in Biotechnology, Biological Engineering, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, or similar.

Who you’ll work with:

• Our Enterprise Intelligence team, who has instrumented our manufacturing and R&D data, steward our data lake, and design models.
• Bioprocess and cellular‑biology scientists who have developed years of biological workflows.

Compensation: $25/hour

*Pay may vary depending on factors including job-related knowledge and skills.

UPSIDE Foods is an equal opportunity employer and we value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Our company-wide mission is to create a product for everyone, so we are deeply committed to having teams and leaders that reflect this mission.