Menlo Fellows

Menlo; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 22,000 - 33,000; Part time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid internship

Job summary

Menlo Research offers a paid internship fellowship that runs year-round, with mentorship from a senior engineer or researcher and ownership of deliverables from day one. You will be hands-on and contribute across software engineering, systems, applied AI, or research.

The program is open to university students, high school students, or mid-career individuals, and involves interviewing and matching to real world problems. A true learning environment awaits.

Qualifications

• Open to university students, high school students, or mid-career individuals.
• Ability to read unfamiliar codebases and make safe, well scoped changes.
• Practical debugging skills: isolate problems and validate fixes.
• A grasp of software or hardware engineering basics: testing, version control, and review.
• A high ownership mindset and the ability to work independently with fast feedback loops.
• Above all, we hire for slope: how fast you grow matters more than where you start.

Responsibilities

• Own a real project end to end, from problem definition through implementation, testing, and documentation.
• Ship production grade work in one or more areas: product engineering, systems, infrastructure, applied AI, or research.
• Work on core Menlo projects, including developer tooling, model runtime and performance, automation, and reliability improvements.
• Debug real issues across codebases and environments, and propose fixes that improve correctness, performance, and maintainability.
• Write clear docs, runbooks, or internal notes that make your work easy for the team to adopt.
• Collaborate closely with engineers and researchers through code reviews and technical discussions.

Skills

Debugging

Ownership mindset

Code reviews

Testing

Version control

Tools

Git

Job description

The Role

Menlo builds open source and production AI systems, from the brain, to developer facing tools to the runtime infrastructure and humanoid platform underneath. This fellowship is deliberately open ended: tell us your strengths and we'll match you to high impact work across software engineering, systems, applied AI, or research. You'll be hands on from day one, with a Menlo engineer or researcher directly responsible for your mentorship and your results. You own deliverables at the same level as the team you join. We expect you to contribute, not observe.

This is a paid internship program that runs year round. Candidates go through a rigorous interview process and get matched with a senior researcher or engineer working on real world problems.

What You’ll Do

• Own a real project end to end, from problem definition through implementation, testing, and documentation.
• Ship production grade work in one or more areas: product engineering, systems, infrastructure, applied AI, or research.
• Work on core Menlo projects, including developer tooling, model runtime and performance, automation, and reliability improvements.
• Debug real issues across codebases and environments, and propose fixes that improve correctness, performance, and maintainability.
• Write clear docs, runbooks, or internal notes that make your work easy for the team to adopt.
• Collaborate closely with engineers and researchers through code reviews and technical discussions.

What We Look For

• University, high school or mid-career individuals looking for a crash course in physical AI and robotics
• The ability to read unfamiliar codebases and make safe, well scoped changes.
• Practical debugging skills: you can isolate problems and validate fixes.
• A grasp of software or hardware engineering basics: testing, version control, and review.
• A high ownership mindset and the ability to work independently with fast feedback loops.
• Above all, we hire for slope: how fast you grow matters more than where you start.

Logistics

• 3 months minimum, based in one of our offices: San Francisco, Ho Chi Minh City, or Singapore
• Paid role.
• Open to pre university and university students.
• You'll need existing work authorization for your office location, as we don't provide visa sponsorship for this role.

Why Join Menlo

You’ll do real work that ships, not busywork on the bench. Genuine ownership, direct mentorship from the people building Asimov, and a chance to prove yourself on hard problems alongside some of the most curious and driven people you'll meet. If you want your work to matter beyond a paper or a demo, this is the place.

A Note on AI

You don't need deep AI expertise for every role, but we do expect everyone at Menlo to be intellectually curious, drawn to tinkering and discovery, and excited to use AI as a real collaborator in their work. For some roles, AI fluency is a core requirement. When that's the case, we'll say so explicitly in the qualifications. People who thrive here don't treat AI as a novelty. They use it to think better, and make your work easier for others to build on.

Equal Opportunity and Accommodations

We hire talented people from a wide range of backgrounds. If you're excited about a role but don't meet every bullet, we still encourage you to apply. Menlo Research is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of any legally protected characteristic. Menlo provides reasonable accommodations during the application process. If you need one, please let your recruiter know.