ML /AI Engineer - Remote

This Netflix role is a **strong but highly specialized opportunity**. ### Quick assessment - **Role:** Machine Learning/AI Infrastructure Engineering Intern — PhD, Winter 2027- **Company:** Netflix- **Location:** Los Gatos, California; remote candidates may be considered- **Level:** PhD research/internship- **Duration:** Minimum 12 weeks, starting January 2027- **Compensation:** Typically **$40–$85/hour**- **Primary focus:** AI/ML infrastructure rather than model research ### What they really want The strongest candidates will have a **PhD currently in progress** in an area such as: - Distributed systems- Computer systems- Networking- Machine learning systems- Computer engineering And practical/research experience with at least one of: - Distributed training or serving- ML infrastructure/platforms- GPU-optimized inference- Model–systems co-design- Large-scale distributed systems **Python is required**, while **Go, C++, or Rust** is a significant advantage. Familiarity with **Ray, Kubernetes, Spark**, or comparable ML/distributed-computing infrastructure is also valuable. ### Biggest screening requirements The most important potential blockers are: 1. **You must currently be pursuing a PhD.**2. Your research should have a meaningful **systems/ML-infrastructure component**.3. You need to be returning to school for at least one semester/quarter after the internship.4. The role is aimed at people interested in **infrastructure + ML**, not primarily pure ML/model development. ### Compensation The stated internship market range is **$40–$85/hour**. At 40 hours/week, that corresponds roughly to **$83,200–$176,800 annualized**, although this is an internship and not a full-year salary. ### One important detail The listing says **Los Gatos headquarters** but also says remote candidates may be considered. So I would treat this as **remote-possible rather than guaranteed remote**. If you're comparing this against the other jobs you've posted, **this is substantially more specialized than the Figma, Upstart, data analyst, or React roles**. It is an excellent target for a PhD researcher in distributed/ML systems, but a poor fit if your background is conventional software engineering without current PhD research.