Applied AI Engineer Intern / Basketball Operations

The Oklahoma City Thunder is an elite performance organization and a leading franchise in the NBA. Beyond any single game, season, or outcome, we’re driven to shape the future of our industry, our community, and our own legacy in sports.  

We’re looking for people who want to make an impact–individuals with the courage and ambition to think and work differently and an endless desire to initiate progress. At the Thunder, you’re joining a culture that performs at the highest level and empowers you to realize your greatest potential.  

As an Applied AI Engineer Intern in Basketball Operations, your work is vital to uncovering valuable insights that help shape the organization’s future — influencing strategy, decision-making, and performance to build the optimal conditions for talent to thrive.

You will work with colleagues, internal infrastructure, and internal and external data sources to develop and deploy integrated artificial intelligence applications that support decision making within strategic planning, player evaluation, basketball analytics, and player performance.

Responsibilities:

• Develop, deploy, and integrate artificial intelligence models into the systems that drive real-time decisions within basketball operations in collaboration with a team of software engineers and data scientists

Qualifications:

• Working toward an undergraduate, graduate or doctoral degree in computer science or related field

• Advanced proficiency in Python and relevant ML libraries such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX

• Advanced SQL skills and experience querying large analytical warehouses (e.g., AWS Redshift, AWS Athena)

• Experience building RAG pipelines and fine-tuning foundation models for specific business tasks

• Experience working with large, spatiotemporal datasets in an AI / ML context a plus

• Experience with cloud-ML tooling such as AWS SageMaker and Bedrock a plus

• Experience working with and protecting confidential information

• Good communication and interpersonal skills with the ability to deliver clear and effective messages to a variety of partners

Additional details:

This is a remote paid internship reporting into the Insight & Foresight pillar. Work schedule may include working on short notice as well as work on evenings, weekends, and holidays. Work hours will total no more than 29 hours per week.

The Thunder recognizes that teams with a variety of backgrounds, perspectives and skills make a stronger company. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, the Thunder organization considers applicants fairly on the basis of qualifications, experience and business needs and provides equal opportunity regardless of race, color, age, sex, ancestry, ethnicity, national origin, religion, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected status. Applicants are considered regardless of past legal system involvement, based upon the needs of the role, nature of and recency of legal history. The Thunder is committed to a welcoming and inclusive environment for all employees through its RAVE culture – Respect and Value Everyone.