Cua (YC X25) · 6 months ago
Research Intern (Summer 2026)
San Francisco, California, US
Internship
Hybrid
Intern
Start in 2026 SummerCua is building infrastructure for general-purpose AI agents, backed by Y Combinator and top-tier investors. As a Research Intern, you will prototype, test, and benchmark multi-modal LLM-based agents while collaborating with engineers and researchers to contribute to open-source research and design experiments.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)SoftwareVirtualization
Responsibilities
Generate and curate large-scale, high-quality multi-modal data (GUIs, browsers, system UIs)
Design and test single- and multi-agent systems for data and computer use
Automate benchmarking of agent orchestration (with or without human-in-the-loop)
Explore new training and inference techniques to boost reasoning and action-taking (e.g., RL-based agents)
Develop benchmarks, tools, and datasets to evaluate agentic capabilities on Cua
Collaborate with the founding team and contribute to research publications, open-source tools, and the broader community
Qualification
Required
Currently a PhD student in Computer Science or related field (strong Master's considered)
Experience in applied research with a solid publication record
Familiarity with modern multi-modal or reasoning agents (e.g., OS-Atlas, Qwen, GUI-R1)
Hands-on experience with PyTorch, Python, and cloud compute (AWS, GCP, etc.)
Comfortable designing experiments, evaluating models, and working with multi-modal data
Excited by generative AI, agent systems, and pushing the boundaries of what's possible
Preferred
Experience with reinforcement learning or agent-based training methods
Prior contributions to open-source projects or benchmark design
Familiarity with large-scale dataset construction and evaluation pipelines
Interest in bridging research and engineering for real-world applications
Based in or able to spend time in SF/Bay Area (preferred), but remote OK
Benefits
Research impact – Opportunity to publish, open-source, and influence open agent research
Hands-on projects – Work directly with engineers and researchers on cutting-edge systems
Open-source visibility – Contribute benchmarks and datasets used by the community
Flexible setup – Remote-friendly; SF-based team
Learning environment – Collaborate on projects at the intersection of infrastructure and AI research
Company
Cua (YC X25)
Cua is an open-source framework that enables AI agents to control full operating systems within high-performance, lightweight virtual containers.
Founded in 2025
2-10 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Early StageTotal Funding
$0.5MKey Investors
Y Combinator
2025-06-11Pre Seed· $0.5M
Company data provided by crunchbase