Research Intern - Artificial Intelligence

Role Overview

Microsoft Research Asia’s Vancouver lab is looking for several research interns focused on artificial intelligence. The lab is part of Microsoft Research Asia’s growth in the Asia-Pacific region and is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Its goal is to help move AI forward by connecting advanced general AI research with practical, high-impact real-world use cases.

This internship offers the chance to work with Microsoft Research scientists and engineers across Vancouver, Redmond, Beijing, and other locations. Research areas may include multimodality, world models, large language models (LLMs), computer vision, AI4Code, natural language processing, robotics, and agents, provided the work aligns with the Vancouver lab or the broader Microsoft Research mission.

Responsibilities

• Explore and investigate current artificial intelligence techniques and identify new ways to push the field forward.
• Apply knowledge across NLP, LLMs, computer vision, and related areas to speed up innovation.
• Create prototypes, refine methods, and improve approaches to address key AI research problems.
• Share results through papers, conference presentations, and other internal or external research channels.
• Work closely with Microsoft researchers and collaborators across teams and regions to advance the research effort.
• During the 12-week internship, partner with mentors, cooperate with other interns and researchers, and contribute to the research community.

Requirements

• Active enrollment in a master’s or PhD program in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, or a related discipline.
• Ability to be physically present at the Microsoft worksite assigned by the manager for the entire internship period.
• A minimum of two reference letters, a cover letter, and any relevant work or research samples must be submitted.
• Comfort working both independently and in a collaborative research setting.
• Openness to learning methods and ideas outside one’s primary area of study.
• Strong programming ability, including prototyping, implementation, and optimization.
• Experience with LLM pre-training, post-training, and inference frameworks such as Megatron.
• Exposure to world models, multimodality, and AI4Code.
• Experience with reinforcement learning and related frameworks such as VeRL or rLLM.
• A publication record in venues such as CVPR, ACL, ICML, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, or RSS is preferred.

Compensation

The base pay range for this internship in Canada is CAD 5,600 to CAD 10,000 per month.

Additional Information

This internship is available year-round and typically starts in the summer. The position will remain open for at least 5 days, and applications are accepted continuously until it is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer and considers all qualified applicants without discrimination based on protected characteristics under applicable law. Support may be available for religious accommodations and reasonable accommodations related to disability during the application process.

Benefits and perks may differ depending on the nature of employment and the country of work.