Intuitive · 1 month ago
AI Research Intern
Sunnyvale, CA
Internship
Onsite
Intern
$70/hr - $88/hr
Start in 2026 WinterIntuitive is a leading company in the medical device industry, seeking an AI Research Intern to support their AI Research and Development team. The intern will work on developing AI foundation models for surgical robotics, focusing on integrating multimodal surgical data to enhance the capabilities of the da Vinci surgical system.
Health CareManufacturingMedical Device
Responsibilities
Conduct research and development on AI technology for surgical robotics, specifically integrating visual data (endoscopic video), surgical context (language/data), and precise robotic actions (instrument control)
Develop and implement novel algorithms for VLA models focused on surgical scene understanding, procedure phase recognition, and learning from expert demonstrations (e.g., imitation learning) to improve system guidance and automation features
Analyze and process large, real-world surgical datasets from the da Vinci system to train and evaluate AI models
Validate models using both internal simulation platforms and, where appropriate, physical da Vinci systems, adhering to strict quality and regulatory protocols
Collaborate with a cross-functional team of engineers, researchers, and potentially even clinicians/surgeons, to translate research prototypes into robust, testable software solutions
Document research outcomes and contribute to technical reports and internal documentation, with potential opportunities for patent filings or conference submissions
Qualification
Required
Must be currently enrolled in and returning to an accredited degree-seeking academic program in the Fall
Must be available to work starting January 2026 and full-time (approximately 40 hours per week) during a 10-12 week period
Current enrollment in an Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or Robotics with emphasis on AI, Machine Learning and Computer Vision or related degree-seeking program at the Master's or Doctorate level
Preferred
Publications in top-tier conferences/journals
Experience building systems based on machine learning and/or deep learning methods
Strong hands-on Python skills
Strong hands-on experience with deep learning frameworks such PyTorch, TensorFlow, and Caffe
Good hands-on experience with the state-of-the-art deep learning models for language modelling and text retrieval of structured and unstructured text
Good hands-on experience with open-source LLM models and libraries (HuggingFace, LLaMa, LangChain, LlamaIndex, etc)
Self-starter and able to work in a collaborative and results oriented environment
Experience extending and innovating on LLM/AI agent techniques. Experience in one or more of RLHF, DPO, finetuning, RAG, CoT, and multi-agent reasoning
Experience with model quantization, LLM edge hardware deployment, prompt engineering, and/or data synthesis
Benefits
Market-competitive compensation packages
Base pay (paid at an hourly rate)
Benefits
Housing allowance
Company
Intuitive
Intuitive designs and manufactures robotic-assisted surgical systems.
Founded in 1995
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
Intuitive has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (339)
2024 (238)
2023 (181)
2022 (285)
2021 (145)
2020 (138)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$5MKey Investors
St. Cloud Capital
2003-04-30Post Ipo Equity
2000-06-23IPO
1996-01-01Seed· $5M
Leadership Team
Craig Child
Sr. Vice President, Human Resources
Gillian Duncan
Senior Vice President, Professional Education & Program Services - Worldwide
Recent News
2025-12-11
2025-11-14
Company data provided by crunchbase