PhD Research Scientist Intern

About the role

We are seeking current PhD students to join our team and bring their research into the real world. The full-time, 16-week AI Research Internship starts in September.

Responsibilities

• Work directly with Canva’s AI team on a live, industry-scale project.
• Turn part of your PhD journey into real-world impact.
• Gain hands-on experience with real data, production infrastructure, and real deadlines.
• Learn from and work alongside researchers and engineers creating Canva’s next generation of AI-powered experiences.
• Develop a synthetic data pipeline that produces conversations with our design agent.
• Combine persona-conditioned user-simulation techniques with our existing intent-labeling and clustering pipeline.
• Measure realism gap, distributional fit, and downstream evaluation quality.
• Collaborate with the eval/labelling, research, and product teams to determine the feasibility of synthetic data substitution for real user-generated content.
• Contribute methodology and findings back to the broader research community through publication.

Requirements

• You are currently completing a PhD (ideally third year or later).
• You have experience with human-AI interaction, conversational agents, or user-modeling research.
• You can design, run, and interpret machine-learning experiments with strong scientific rigour.
• You can develop research code for data processing, model training, and evaluation.
• You communicate technical work clearly in writing and presentations.
• You enjoy collaborating with researchers and engineers on technically challenging problems.
• You are a clear communicator who can collaborate effectively across teams.

Qualifications

• Experience with machine learning and data science.
• Strong programming skills in Python or similar languages.
• Understanding of natural language processing and conversational agents.
• Knowledge of statistical methods and experimental design.

Skills

• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Excellent communication and collaboration abilities.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.

Benefits

• Flexible work arrangements including remote work options.
• Hybrid work model allowing for a balance between remote and in-person collaboration.
• Competitive salary of $157,000.
• Opportunities for professional growth and advancement within the company.
• Access to a supportive and inclusive workplace culture.

Pay

$157,000 per annum.

Schedule

The role is based in San Francisco, with a flexible hybrid work arrangement.