MTS - Research Scientist Internship

Collinear AI, Inc.; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 33,000 - 67,000; Part time

Job summary

Collinear AI, Inc. offers a 12-week internship for PhD students to contribute to frontier AI data engines. The MTS - Research Scientist (Applied Scientist) role focuses on developing ultra-realistic simulation environments and evaluation stacks used by leading AI labs.

You will collaborate with the founders and research staff to shape the roadmap, design agentic environments, and verify models with high-signal data and post-training runs.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in a technical field (CS, Math, Physics, etc.).
• Strong software engineering with Python-friendly, CLI-first development environment.
• Fundamental understanding of foundation models and model evaluation.

Responsibilities

• Build Agentic Environments: design and implement next-gen simulation environments.
• Programmatic and Agentic Verification: develop policy-aware judges and evaluations.
• Close the Loop: run post-training assessments to deliver frontier performance on open-source models.
• Collaborate: work with founders and research staff to shape the roadmap.
• Create: analyze model failure modes and build scalable data pipelines.

Skills

Python

Software engineering

ML foundations

Research experience

Education

PhD in CS/Math/Physics

Master's degree in technical field

Bachelor's degree in technical field

Tools

Git

Job description

Collinear's Internship program is designed for PhD students who are eligible to do a 12-week internship. Start dates are flexible and can be extended.

As an MTS - Research Scientist (Applied Scientist), you will help build the data engine for frontier AI. You will develop the high-fidelity environments and evaluation stacks that the world’s leading AI labs rely on to stress-test their most advanced agents. You will work across domains including Computer Use, Enterprise MCP/Toolcalling and Coding. Verifier Design, Simulated Personas, Benchmarking Personal AGI are some of the research areas we work on.

Responsibilities:

• Build Agentic Environments: Design and implement the next generation of "SimLabs", ultra-realistic, long-horizon simulation environments where agents learn to navigate ambiguity and maintain context.

• Programmatic and Agentic Verification: Develop rigorous, policy-aware judges and evaluations that measure genuine capability and safety beyond simple benchmarks.

• Close the Loop: Design and execute high-quality post-training runs (CPT, SFT, RL) to deliver frontier performance on open-source models using curated, high-signal data.

• Collaborate: Work daily with the founders and research staff to shape the roadmap and push the state-of-the-art in AI reliability.

• Create. Work on analyzing model failure modes and creating frontier data pipelines which scale with test-time compute.
  

About You

We are looking for individuals who demonstrate a rare combination of technical depth, research intuition, and high agency.

• Technical Foundation: A Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in a technical field (CS, Math, Physics, etc.), or a demonstrated "proof of work" through significant open-source contributions or industry experience.

• Engineering Rigor: A strong foundation in software engineering with the ability to build robust, scalable infrastructure. You should be comfortable in a Python-friendly, CLI-first development environment.

• ML Fluency: A principled understanding of foundation models, including how they are constructed, evaluated, and optimized.

• Empirical Mindset: Experience conducting research or technical experiments with a focus on reproducibility and data-driven results.
  

What will make you stand out

• Research Taste: You have a strong intuition for identifying what matters in complex problem spaces. You can balance deep research exploration with the pragmatism needed to ship a product.

• Impact-Driven Agency: You care about outcomes, not just activity. You don't wait for a ticket; you identify gaps in the system, build the solution, and ensure it moves real-world metrics for frontier AI labs.

• Domain Expertise: Prior experience with Reinforcement Learning (RLHF/RLAIF), simulation systems, or building long-horizon agentic environments.

• Proven Track Record: A history of contributing to influential ML research (e.g., publications at NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML) or maintaining high-impact open-source projects.

• Post-Training Experience: Experience fine-tuning or evaluating large-scale models to deliver "frontier performance" on open-source benchmarks.

Why Join Collinear

• Own the Frontier: Work on the most pressing problem in AI today: making agents reliable enough for production.

• High Density of Talent: Join a small, elite team where you will be pushed to do your life's work.

• Elite Compensation: We offer competitive salary and equity packages to ensure we attract the best of the best.

• Direct Impact: At a seed-backed startup, your work directly shapes the company's trajectory and the future of AI safety.