About the Role
We’re looking for smart, motivated, and curious PhD students to join us next summer or earlier as Research Scientist Interns. This is a unique opportunity to explore new research directions in AI, reinforcement learning, and multi-agent systems while working alongside a small, elite team of researchers and engineers.
You will not be constrained to our current product goals, but rather, you will be given the resources needed to accomplish your best work. You will be encouraged to publish your work with us in conferences/journals.
Qualifications
Currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science (AI/ML, NLP, Robotics, etc.), or computational fields in Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, etc.
Demonstrated ability to design, implement, and evaluate experiments
Strong publication record or evidence of impactful research contributions
Startup-oriented mindset: excited by ambiguity, rapid iteration, and big ideas
Bonus
Publications at top conferences (ICML, ICLR, Neurips, UAI, RSS, CoRL, JMLR, TMLR etc)
Experience with large-scale distributed training or inference engines (e.g., DeepSpeed, vLLM, FSDP)
Contributions to open-source projects in AI/ML or systems research
Cross-disciplinary interests (e.g., neuroscience, human-computer interaction, generative media)
What makes us interesting
Small, elite team of ex-founders, researchers from top AI Labs, top CS grads, and engineers from top companies
True ownership You will not be blocked by bureaucracy, shipping meaningful work within weeks rather than months
Serious momentum We're well-funded by top investors, moving fast, and focused on execution
What we do
Ship consumer products powered by cutting-edge AI research, and
Build infrastructure that facilitates research and product, and
Innovate cutting-edge research that will open up new consumer product forms
The Details
Minimum 40 hours a week, onsite in Menlo Park (start and end date flexible)
Startup hours apply
Generous compensation
Top Skills
What We Do
Fundamental Research Labs is building digital humans—machines with the capacity to learn, care, and grow alongside us.
We're an applied research company building autonomous, collaborative, and socially intelligent agents. Our small team includes computational neuroscientists, AI researchers, engineers, and builders from MIT EECS, Stanford NLP Group, Google X, Citadel, and beyond.
Our research prototypes began with multi-agent experiments in games like Minecraft and Roblox, where over a million people have interacted with our agents. Today, we're bringing those agents out of the sandbox and into the real world—starting with your computer.
