Research Intern - Multimodal AI Research

Research Internships at Microsoft provide a dynamic environment for research careers with a network of world-class research labs led by globally-recognized scientists and engineers, who pursue innovation in a range of scientific and technical disciplines to help solve complex challenges in diverse fields, including computing, healthcare, economics, and the environment.

The AI Platform team is on a mission to advance the state of the art in AI and deliver on our company’s vision for how intelligent cloud and intelligent edge will shape the next phase of innovation. The team includes top scientists and researchers from across Microsoft who are creating a center of excellence in speech, computer vision, and natural language.

Within the AI Platform, the Multi-modal Intelligence team (MMI) mission is to make fundamental contributions to advancing the state-of-the-art in AI technology related to Video, Image, Document, and other multimodality inputs. “Documents”, for example, stand at the intersection between NLP and Vision research. To fully understand a document, one needs to borrow from both language and visual (Layout) elements of the document. We explore both single and multimodality inputs – and their synergy - to conduct research on forward-looking topics such as Video Understanding, Information Retrieval, Key-Value extraction, few-shot Named Entity Recognition (NER), hierarchical layout analysis, and many others. 

We are looking for Research Interns to work on cutting edge research in Multimodal AI. We are particularly interested in Research Interns with background in AI, NLP, and/or CV, including topics like Video/image understanding, document layout analysis, chart understanding, multi-page multi-document question answering, novel ways of leveraging LLMs for document/video/image understanding and solving problems inherent to large language models (grounding, retrieval-based generation, etc.). Familiarity with modern LLMs/VLMs is a plus, but not required.  

Responsibilities

Research Interns put inquiry and theory into practice. Alongside fellow doctoral candidates and some of the world’s best researchers, Research Interns learn, collaborate, and network for life. Research Interns not only advance their own careers, but they also contribute to exciting research and development strides. During the 12-week internship, Research Interns are paired with mentors and expected to collaborate with other Research Interns and researchers, present findings, and contribute to the vibrant life of the community. Research internships are available in all areas of research, and are offered year-round, though they typically begin in the summer.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Currently enrolled in a PhD program in Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, AI, or a related field.
• At least 1 year of experience in NLP, computer vision, Deep learning, or multimodal research with hands-on deep learning experience.

Other Requirements

• Research Interns are expected to be physically located in their manager’s Microsoft worksite location for the duration of their internship.
• In addition to the qualifications below, you’ll need to submit a minimum of two reference letters for this position as well as a cover letter and any relevant work or research samples. After you submit your application, a request for letters may be sent to your list of references on your behalf. Note that reference letters cannot be requested until after you have submitted your application, and furthermore, that they might not be automatically requested for all candidates. You may wish to alert your letter writers in advance, so they will be ready to submit your letter. 

Preferred Qualifications

• Proficient algorithmic problem solving and software development skills (Python, C/C++, etc.).
• Experience with open-source tools such as PyTorch, etc.
• Publication(s) in top-tier conferences or journals in related fields (e.g., ACL, CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, EMNLP, NAACL, NIPS, ICML, ICLR, IJCV, PAMI, etc.). 

The base pay range for this internship is USD $6,550 - $12,880 per month. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $8,480 - $13,920 per month.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-intern-pay 

Microsoft accepts applications and processes offers for these roles on an ongoing basis.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.