Software Engineering Internship, AI for the Planet

Persons in these roles are expected to work from our offices in Seattle. On-site requirements vary based on position and team. If you have questions about on-site work arrangements for this role please ask your recruiter.

*Compensation dependent on current degree enrollment.
Engineering Intern Undergrad: $94320 (Annually)
Engineering Intern Masters: $106110 (Annually)
Engineering Intern PhD: $140000 (Annually)

Who You Are:

We are seeking a motivated and passionate Software Engineering Intern to join the Skylight Engineering Team for the summer. This role offers an exciting opportunity to work on impactful projects learn from experienced engineers and contribute to protecting marine life.

Ai2 Internship Information:

• Duration: 12 weeks
• Start date: Flexible
• Candidates: An undergraduate student with strong software engineering fundamentals and a passion for building products with impact.

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

Who We Are:

Ai2s AI for the Planet initiative brings together programs like Skylight and OlmoEarth to apply cutting-edge AI toward solving urgent environmental and humanitarian challenges. From monitoring illegal fishing and protecting marine ecosystems to mapping crops tracking wildfires supporting disaster recovery and strengthening food security our teams build open scalable systems. These systems turn global Earth-observation data into actionable insights.

By combining advanced machine learning with open infrastructure and a deep commitment to public impact we empower organizations worldwide to better understand and protect our planets most vital systems.

Read more about OlmoEarth and Skylight on our websites.

At Ai2 we are dedicated to using AI to solve some of the worlds biggest problems. Our mission-driven team values collaboration impact and openness. As an intern youll be part of an inclusive and supportive environment where your ideas and contributions truly matter.

Your Next Challenge:

• Collaborate with the engineering team to develop test and deploy software tools that support our mission.
• Work on and ship production code for real-world projects involving data pipelines web applications or satellite imagery processing.
• Gain hands-on experience with technologies such as Typescript Python React Kafka Mapbox ElasticSearch Postgres MongoDB Kubernetes and cloud platforms like Google Cloud.
• Participate in brainstorming sessions technical discussions and code reviews.
• Contribute to the development of tools or features that extend our platforms ability to deliver high-impact insights across domains such as marine conservation land use climate resilience and disaster recovery.

What Youll Need:

• Undergraduate or Masters student pursuing a degree in Computer Science or a related field.
• Passion for software engineering and interest in environmental conservation.
• A strong foundation in any modern programming language.
• Curiosity and eagerness to learn new technologies and tackle technical challenges.
• Strong communication skills and ability to work in a collaborative team environment.
• Interest in the full product development process including engaging with users to understand their needs and gather feedback to improve products.

What Youll Gain:

• Real-world experience in software engineering and exposure to state-of-the-art AI tools.
• Mentorship from experienced professionals who are leaders in their fields.
• Insight into how technology is used to address critical environmental challenges.
• A chance to make a meaningful impact and use technology for good tackling some of the planets most pressing environmental and humanitarian challenges.

Projects:

To give you a better idea of the kinds of projects youd work on here are some examples of our previous and current projects:

• Multisensor Satellite Detection Pipelines What began as a Sentinel-2 vessel-detection system has evolved into a planetary-scale inference pipeline spanning Sentinel-1 Sentinel-2 and Landsat imagery. Our distributed processing stack downloads new satellite scenes as soon as theyre available runs fine-tuned computer-vision models and makes results visible to users within hours. Building this system meant solving hard problems in cloud-scale parallelism planetary datasets and GPU optimization. (Read more in our blog post here)
• Geospatial Annotation Tool We built a browser-based annotation platform that lets users create training datasets across multiple imagery types and time steps. Its used by conservation scientists and NGOs to label everything from croplands to mangroves replacing what was once a fragmented or prohibitively expensive process.
• Model Fine-Tuning Platform The OlmoEarth Platform allows users with no ML background to fine-tune our foundation models to their specific domain whether thats wildfire fuel mapping crop classification or flood detection. Engineers collaborated closely with researchers to design the orchestration configuration and compute management layers that make walk-up fine-tuning possible achieving state-of-the-art performance with minimal friction. (Read more in our blog post here)
• AIS Data Pipeline & Track Generation Our largest data source is a real-time feed of globalAIS data about 1k messages per second that we use to compute vessel trajectories in real-time using Kafka Streams. This data stream is great but very messy. Our algorithms have to sift through the noise very quickly to find the signal. Our Machine Learning models take these computed trajectories as input to predict vessel behaviors.

As an intern we dont expect you to come in knowing our tech stack. We care way more about your ability to learn and engage. But since we know youll ask here is our current tech stack:

• React/Typescript web-apps.
• Python microservices mostly HTTP APIs.
• Kafka streams data pipelines on Python and Typescript.
• Postgres ElasticSearch MongoDB Redis for data persistence.
• Docker / Kubernetes / Terraform on Google Cloud.
• PyTorch models.

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 addition to Ai2s 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 peoples 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 .

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 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.