Student Researcher - (Seed Model - Multimodal Interaction & World Model) – 2026 Start (PhD)

Bytedance; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 97,000 - 138,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Life insurance

Wellbeing benefits

10 paid holidays per year

Paid sick time

Housing allowance

Job summary

ByteDance Seed team seeks PhD interns to design RL training systems for multimodal foundation models and to develop unified frameworks for audiovisual and language integration. The role emphasizes visual latent reasoning and collaboration with researchers on world modeling and instruction-conditioned generation.

Applicants should be PhD candidates with publications in leading AI/ML venues and a strong RL/multimodal research background, ready to start in the United States under a campus

Qualifications

• Pursuing a PhD in a related technical discipline.
• Publications in top AI/ML venues (CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML).
• Strong research background in RL, multimodal learning, video understanding or vision-language modeling.
• Must have work authorization in the country of employment at the time of hire.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement RL training systems for large-scale multimodal models.
• Develop unified modeling frameworks integrating video, audio, and language for visual latent reasoning.
• Explore RL-based approaches for multimodal visual reasoning and generation.
• Collaborate with researchers to evaluate models on world modeling, reasoning, and instruction-conditioned generation.

Skills

Reinforcement learning

Multimodal learning

Video understanding

Vision-language modeling

Education

PhD in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering or related technical discipline

Job description

Responsibilities

The Seed Multimodal Interaction and World Model team is dedicated to developing models that boast human-level multimodal understanding and interaction capabilities. The team also aspires to advance the exploration and development of multimodal assistant products.

• Design and implement reinforcement learning (RL) training systems for large-scale multimodal foundation models
• Develop unified modeling frameworks that integrate video, audio, and language, with a focus on visual latent reasoning
• Explore RL-based approaches to bridge understanding and generation for multimodal visual reasoning
• Collaborate with researchers to evaluate models on tasks involving world modeling, reasoning, and instruction-conditioned generation

We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship. PhD internships at Our Company provide students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, as well as to the organization's future plans and emerging technologies.

Our dynamic internship experience blends hands‑on learning, enriching community‑building and professional development events, and collaboration with industry experts.

Minimum Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a PhD in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline
• Publications in accredited venues, such as CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, or other leading conferences in AI and ML
• Strong research background in at least one of the following: reinforcement learning, multimodal learning, video understanding, or vision-language modeling
• Must obtain work authorization in the country of employment at the time of hire, and maintain ongoing work authorization during employment

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with reinforcement learning in multimodal or interactive environments
• Familiarity with video generation or diffusion-based generative models
• Experience with large-scale model training (e.g., distributed training, curriculum learning, or memory-augmented transformers)
• Solid programming and engineering skills, with experience building training or evaluation pipelines for ML models

As a condition of employment, all successful candidates must be able to establish authorization to work in the United States. For this position, the Company does not provide sponsorship or any immigration-related benefits.

Job Information

【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Hourly) - Campus Intern

The hourly rate range for this position in the selected city is $85- $85.

Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Interns have day one access to health insurance, life insurance, wellbeing benefits and more. Interns also receive 10 paid holidays per year and paid sick time (56 hours if hired in first half of year, 40 if hired in second half of year). Interns who are not working 100% remote may also be eligible for housing allowance.

The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:

• Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
• Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
• Exercising sound judgment.

About Doubao (Seed)

Established in 2023, the ByteDance Seed team is dedicated to pioneering new paths toward artificial general intelligence. We aspire to advance the frontier of intelligence to drive progress for both technology and society.

With a long-term vision for the AI sector, the Seed team's research spans MLLM, GenMedia, AI for Science, and Robotics. We maintain a global presence with laboratories and career opportunities across China, Singapore, and the United States. To date, we have launched industry-leading general foundation models and cutting-edge multimodal capabilities. Our technology powers over 50 application scenarios - including Doubao, Jimeng, TRAE, Dola and Dreamnia - and serves enterprise customers through Volcano Engine and BytePlus. Third-party data shows that the Doubao App ranks first in user volume in the Chinese market, while Doubao foundation models lead the industry in average daily token consumption.

Why Join ByteDance

Inspiring creativity is at the core of ByteDance's mission. Our innovative products are built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and enrich life - a mission we work towards every day.

As ByteDancers, we strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. By constantly iterating and fostering an \"Always Day 1\" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our Company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.

Diversity & Inclusion

ByteDance is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At ByteDance, our mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.

Reasonable Accommodation

ByteDance is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/RA-request.