Research Internship, Advancing Open Agentic LLMs

Who You Are:

Ai2 is seeking passionate, early-career researchers to join us for full-time research internships with us. Applicants should have a demonstrated interest in advancing the state of the art in large language model (LLM) based agents and associated environments. International candidates are welcome to apply. Pay is competitive, and visa sponsorship is available.

Ai2 Research Internship Information:

• Duration: 12 weeks
• Start date: Flexible
• Candidates: A PhD candidate or a master/undergraduate student with a strong research background

Please apply by December 15, 2025 at 11:00pm Pacific Time to be considered for our Spring/Summer 2026 internships.

Who We Are:

At Ai2, we are excited about developing large language models that can autonomously act in real-world environments to accomplish user goals. We are building frontier open agentic LLMs - models that can plan, reason, use tools and APIs, write code, and interact with complex, dynamic environments to solve long-horizon tasks safely and reliably. This work is part of Ai2's broader mission to make AI systems more capable, trustworthy, and beneficial to science and society, while also openly releasing artifacts and effective procedures to build such systems.

We are seeking ambitious, motivated interns to join a research effort focused on advancing the science of training and evaluating general purpose agentic models. Our work systematically explores how data synthesis, training objectives, and learning environments shape the emergence of generalizable and reliable agentic behavior, and how such behavior can be measured in a meaningful and reproducible manner.

You will be part of a team investigating fundamental questions in this space, such as:

1. What data, training strategies, and environments yield models that generalize across diverse agentic tasks?
2. Can we design challenging benchmarks and environments that capture complex multi-step tool use and other underexplored aspects of agentic behavior?
3. How should models interleave thinking and tool use? Can they learn to reason efficiently while deciding when and how to act?
4. How can external memory help models tackle long-horizon reasoning and planning?
5. How can we train models to be safe, reliable, and controllable when used for agentic tasks?
6. Can we develop a theoretical understanding of agentic abilities and limits of LLMs and use it to guide agent development?

Your Next Challenge:

At Ai2, you will be working with world-class AI researchers and talented software engineers, who perform team-based, ambitious research, with a mandate to strive for big breakthroughs, not just incremental progress, in an exciting and interactive workplace. We encourage open collaborations and support students freely publishing papers based on their internship work.

As an Ai2 Research Intern, you will:

• be paired with a mentor and will participate directly in Ai2's groundbreaking work, including building state-of-the-art AI systems, developing challenging benchmarks, and conducting extensive experiments;
• have access to Ai2's compute resources, using our clusters of A100s and H100s; and
• have the opportunity to contribute to our larger projects such as OLMo and Asta.

To see more about our current, future, and past interns, check out the internship page on our website!

What You'll Need:

• Be pursuing PhD (or, in exceptional cases, MS or BS) in computer science or a related field.
• Have an interest in cutting-edge artificial intelligence research, in particular in building, evaluating, and understanding LLM based agents.

Physical Demands and Work Environment:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the functions.

• Must be able to remain in a stationary position for long periods of time.
• The ability to communicate information and ideas so others will understand. Must be able to exchange accurate information in these situations.
• The ability to observe details at close range.
• Can work under deadlines.

A Little More About Ai2:

The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence is a non-profit research institute in Seattle founded by Paul Allen. We have a beautiful office right on Lake Union; catered lunches; smart, friendly and helpful co-workers. We are right next to multiple mountain ranges, oceans, and forests, that make for a vibrant outdoor scene.

The core mission of Ai2 is to contribute to humanity through high-impact research in artificial intelligence. In addition to Ai2's core mission, we also aim to contribute to humanity through our treatment of each member of the Ai2 Team. Some highlights are:

• We are a learning organization - because everything Ai2 does is ground-breaking, we are learning every day. Similarly, through weekly Ai2 Academy lectures, a wide variety of world-class AI experts as guest speakers, and our commitment to your personal on-going education, Ai2 is a place where you will have opportunities to continue learning alongside your coworkers.
• We value diversity - We seek to hire, support, and promote people from all genders, ethnicities, and all levels of experience regardless of age. We particularly encourage applications from women, non-binary individuals, people of color, members of the LGBTQA+ community, and people with disabilities of any kind.
• We value inclusion - We understand the value that people's individual experiences and perspectives can bring to an organization, and we are building a culture in which all voices are heard, respected and considered.
• We emphasize a healthy work/life balance - we believe our team members are happiest and most productive when their work/life balance is optimized. While we value powerful research results which drive our mission forward, we also value dinner with family, weekend time, and vacation time. We offer generous paid vacation and sick leave as well as family leave.
• We are collaborative and transparent - we consider ourselves a team, all moving with a common purpose. We are quick to cheer our successes, and even quicker to share and jointly problem solve our failures.
• We are in Seattle - and our office is on the water! We have mountains, we have lakes, we have four seasons, we bike to work, we have a vibrant theater scene, and we have so much else. We even have kayaks for you to paddle right outside our front door. We welcome interest from applicants from outside of the United States.
• We are friendly- chances are you will like every one of the 200+ (and growing) people who work here. We do.

Ai2 is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. You may view the related Know Your Rights compliance poster and the Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision by clicking on their corresponding links.

This employer participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. If E-Verify cannot confirm that you are authorized to work, this employer is required to give you written instructions and an opportunity to contact the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Social Security Administration (SSA) so you can begin to resolve the issue before the employer can take any action against you, including terminating your employment. Employers can only use E-Verify once you have accepted a job offer and completed the Form I-9.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to employees and applicants with disabilities to the full extent required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). If you feel you need a reasonable accommodation pursuant to the ADA, you are encouraged to contact us at recruiting@allenai.org.

Benefits:

• Team members and their families are covered by medical, dental, vision, and an employee assistance program.
• Team members are able to enroll in our health savings account plan, our healthcare reimbursement arrangement plan, and our health care and dependent care flexible spending account plans.
• Team members will receive $125 per month to assist with commuting or internet expenses and will also receive $200 per month for fitness and wellbeing expenses.
• Team members will accrue sick days per year in line with Seattle sick time requirements.If you are usually scheduled to work on a holiday that Ai2 recognizes as a day off, you will be paid for this day.

Note: This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the team members(s) of this position. Team members will be required to follow any other job-related instructions and to perform any other job-related duties requested by any person authorized to give instructions or assignments. All duties and responsibilities are essential functions and requirements and are subject to possible modification to reasonably accommodate individuals with disabilities. To perform this job successfully, the team member(s) will possess the skills, aptitudes, and abilities to perform each duty proficiently. Some requirements may exclude individuals who pose a direct threat or significant risk to the health or safety of themselves or others. The requirements listed in this document are the minimum levels of knowledge, skills, or abilities. This document does not create an employment contract, implied or otherwise, other than an at will relationship.