Staff Research Scientist, Intern - PhD Agentic AI

About the role

Visa's Internship Program offers a 12‑week immersive experience where interns work on impactful projects that advance Visa's mission. Interns build meaningful connections, strengthen communication and business skills, and gain hands‑on experience in a dynamic, global environment. The program includes interactive workshops, learning sessions, social events, and culminates in a final presentation to Visa leaders.

The internship is part of Visa Research’s GenAI Research Team, which drives purpose‑driven research to advance the next generation of AI for secure, intelligent, and scalable commerce. The team focuses on agentic AI, autonomous and collaborative AI agents for reasoning, planning, safe system interaction, and applications such as agentic commerce, enterprise AI workflows, and AI coding.

Responsibilities

• Conduct research to improve AI agent reliability, reduce hallucinations, and advance safety, security, and ethical alignment.
• Design techniques to enhance AI agent efficiency, including model compression, quantization, fine‑tuning strategies, and inference optimization.
• Develop and evaluate secure access‑control and guardrail systems that promote responsible AI interactions.
• Investigate multi‑agent architectures for secure, coordinated, and efficient collaboration.
• Build tools and frameworks to benchmark agent safety, robustness, and performance.
• Prototype and experiment to translate research ideas into practical AI capabilities.
• Contribute to research publications, patents, and technical reports where appropriate.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications

• Students pursuing a Ph.D. with a graduation date in December 2027 or later.

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong research record demonstrated by publications, patents, conference presentations, or technical contributions.
• Research experience in AI agents, AI safety, security, alignment, trustworthy AI, or reliable LLM systems.
• Experience with multi‑agent systems, agent frameworks, planning, or evaluation techniques.
• Knowledge of techniques for reducing hallucinations, enhancing factuality, enabling guardrails, enforcing policies, or building secure AI systems.
• Experience applying efficiency methods such as compression, quantization, fine‑tuning, or inference optimization.
• Proficiency in programming languages such as Python, C++, Java, or similar.
• Strong communication, collaboration, and analytical problem‑solving skills.
• Ability to innovate, adapt to ambiguity, and tackle complex research challenges.

Pay

Estimated hourly range for a new hire is $56.00 – $63.00 USD, which may include potential sales incentive payments. The rate may vary based on knowledge, skills, experience, and location.

Schedule

• Work hours vary according to departmental needs.
• Minimum of three days per week in the office (specific days to be confirmed by the hiring manager).
• Travel required 5‑10 % of the time.

Physical and Mental Requirements

The position is performed in an office setting and requires the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, and frequently operate standard office equipment such as telephones and computers.