AI Technology PhD Research Internship

Location: UK based from either our Bristol, Cambridge or London office.

Research PhD Internship

Explore a research career at Graphcore through a PhD internship, gaining hands-on experience on real projects. You’ll bring fresh ideas, put your learning into practice and help shape what we’re creating. Along the way, you’ll tackle challenging problems with a team who welcome your questions and support you as you build your skills and confidence.

What you’ll work on

Explore how your research could inform the next generation of AI compute, working alongside researchers tackling questions shaped by real-world hardware and software challenges.

Our team is interested in numerous topics across the field, working on problems where algorithms, hardware, and systems meet. These topics include large-scale pretraining and post-training of LLMs, efficient inference, numerics, world models, molecule generation for life science applications, and model safety and interpretability. Across all these directions, you’ll come up with new ideas, implement models and algorithms, design experiments, and present your findings (often in the form of a paper).

You’ll have room to follow promising ideas and help shape your research direction, with mentoring as you test your thinking. Your work could contribute to public research shared with the wider AI community.

Your team and support

Graphcore Research explores the computational requirements of machine intelligence and how hardware can enable the next generation of AI models. The team publishes at leading AI and machine learning conferences, including NeurIPS, ICML and ICLR.

You’ll learn alongside researchers working across a wide range of AI topics. Mentoring and open research discussions will give you opportunities to explore ideas, get feedback and decide which questions to pursue.

Decisions are shaped by experimental evidence and technical discussion. As an intern, you’ll be encouraged to ask questions, challenge assumptions and share results early, with support from experienced researchers as you develop your ideas.

How you’ll learn and grow

Over the internship, you’ll build research experience by taking a question through experimentation, implementation and analysis.

You’ll develop your judgement about what a result tells you, which ideas deserve further investigation and how to communicate your findings clearly. Exploring both theory and practical experiments will help you understand how your research connects to AI models, hardware and systems, and where you’d like to take it next.

What we're looking for 

• Currently studying for a PhD specialising in AI or machine learning.
• Strong coding ability in Python or C++, demonstrated through projects, research or other practical experience
• Experience implementing algorithms in machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch
• The ability to design experiments, interpret results and communicate research clearly, with curiosity about both theory and practical experimentation

Previous industry experience is not required. Tell us about a research question you explored, how you approached it and what you learned through your experiments.

Benefits

• Flexible working: Find a balance between your internship and life outside work
• Life in the office: Get to know your colleagues in spaces designed for collaboration, with free food and a great selection of ice cream!
• Develop your research in an industry setting, exchanging ideas with experienced researchers and engineers

We welcome people from all backgrounds and experiences and are committed to building an inclusive environment where everyone can do their best work.

We’re an equal opportunity employer and recognise that everyone brings different strengths and perspectives. If you need any adjustments during the interview process, just let us know - we’re happy to support you.

Sponsorship

Applicants must already have the right to work in the UK for the full duration of the programme, without requiring visa sponsorship. We are unable to sponsor work visas for our Early Careers opportunities.

Introduction to Graphcore

At Graphcore, we’re building next generation AI compute: from semiconductors and software to systems at datacenter scale. We are proud to be owned by SoftBank Group and work with other companies in the SoftBank family to deliver AI compute to customers working at the AI frontier.

An internship at Graphcore gives you the chance to explore where your interests and skills could take you. You’ll work alongside people with different backgrounds and expertise, from AI researchers to chip designers and software engineers. Together, you’ll share ideas and solve challenging problems, building experience and confidence to help you decide what comes next.

Curious about where your skills could take you? Apply for a PhD internship at Graphcore and help us build what comes next.