Student Researcher LLM Post Training – Agent & Reinforcement Learning PhD

Location

San Jose

Technology

Intern

A99467

About the team:
The Seed LLM Post Training team is responsible for researching cutting‑edge post‑train technologies and providing core post‑train capabilities for unified multimodal large models. The team’s goal is to research and explore next‑generation advanced technologies such as SFT, RM, RL, and self‑learning during the post‑train phase, while significantly optimizing and improving key areas including reasoning, coding, agent, and omni model. PhD internships at Byte Dance provide students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, and to the organization’s future plans and emerging technologies.

Our dynamic internship experience blends hands‑on learning, enriching community‑building and development events, and collaboration with industry experts.

Application process:

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early. Please state your availability clearly in your resume (Start date, End date).

• Develop generalized agents capable of solving complex real‑world tasks through long‑horizon reasoning, memory, and multi‑turn interaction.
• Tackle the challenges of large‑scale reinforcement learning, building systems that can scale across compute, data, and environments to improve model intelligence and alignment with human preferences.
• Advance agent capabilities in long‑horizon, multi‑step reasoning across diverse domains, aiming to match or surpass expert‑level performance.
• Explore planning, tool use, and feedback mechanisms to enhance agent robustness and adaptability across domains.

• Currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, AI, or a related field.
• Research experience in reinforcement learning, sequential decision‑making, or agent behavior.
• First‑author publications in top‑tier ML/AI conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML).
• Solid programming and experimentation skills, including with RL or LLM frameworks.
• Must obtain work authorization in the country of employment at the time of hire, and maintain ongoing work authorization during employment.

• Experience with LLM agents, tool use, or prompt‑based control.
• Familiarity with environments such as Web Arena, ALFWorld, or programmatic reasoning tasks.
• Understanding of RL techniques such as reward shaping, memory augmentation, or curriculum learning.

The hourly rate range for this position in the selected city is $65–$65.

Interns have day one access to health insurance, life insurance, wellbeing benefits and more. Interns also receive 10 paid holidays per year and paid sick time (56 hours if hired in first half of year, 40 if hired in second half of year). Interns who are not working 100% remote may also be eligible for housing allowance.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:

Founded in 2023, the Byte Dance Doubao (Seed) Team is dedicated to pioneering advanced AI foundation models. Our goal is to lead in cutting‑edge research and drive technological and societal advancements. With a strong commitment to AI, our research areas span deep learning, reinforcement learning, language, vision, audio, AI infra and AI safety. Our team has labs and research positions across China, Singapore, and the US.

Inspiring creativity is at the core of Byte Dance’s mission. Our…