2026 PhD Residency - Knowledge Graph, Operations Research and Reinforcement Learning, Early Stage Project

InternshipMountain View, CA

How you will make 10x impact:

General description: A machine learning/artificial intelligence specialist with experience in LLM and reinforcement learning post training.

  1. Collaborating with the X Project team to design and develop machine learning approaches/algorithms to support the project's mission
    1. Understanding the project’s goals and challenges and conduct relevant literature surveys
    2. Suggesting agentic RL solutions in which machines/approaches/algorithms/models can apply to those challenges
    3. Prototype/train/evaluate RL algorithms, tools and components of large scale AI systems
  2. Engaging with the resident community during the program, engaging with the X community, attending colloquia and tech talks.

This project aims to push the limits of science and modeling as we know them and to prove how ML can radically accelerate our understanding of the world

  • Location: X's headquarters in Mountain View, CA
  • Start Date(s): January 2026
  • Duration: a flexible full-time 4 mo. to 1 year program based on project team needs and your availability

Throughout your AI Residency you can expect:

  • To be embedded into one of our confidential or public X projects
  • To get paid competitively and receive benefits
  • To be a part of a lively community of AI and ML Residents
  • To attend tech-talks with AI leaders from across X

What you should have:

  • Currently enrolled in a PhD program in a STEM field such as CS, Physics, Engineering or Mathematics/Statistics with a strong interest in machine learning.
  • Strong experience with one or more general purpose programming languages such as Python, C/C++.
  • Experience with reinforcement learning (RL) and large language models (LLMs).
  • Ability to set up RL infrastructure and synthetic data generation pipelines.
  • Familiarity with operations research (OR) problems and their formalization.
  • Knowledge of basic ontologies and programmatically constructing knowledge graphs (KG) from structured and unstructured data.

It’d be great if you also had these:

  • Open-source projects that demonstrate relevant skills and/or publications in relevant conferences and journals (e.g. NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, COLM, ACL/EMNLP, ICASSP).
  • Experience with GRPO/DAPO based online reinforcement learning with LLMs(7B+) on multi-GPU settings.
  • Ability to produce code (e.g., in Google OR-Tools) and define rewards for formalized optimization problems.
  • Experience translating natural language into formal graph query languages (Cypher, SPARQL).
  • Experience using frontier LLMs (e.g., Gemini-Pro) to generate large-scale, high-quality synthetic datasets with automated verification steps.

Additional public information:

https://www.wired.com/video/watch/astro-teller-captain-of-moonshots-at-x-speaks-at-wired25

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2019-10-10/alphabet-x-s-astro-teller-on-bloomberg-studio-1-0-video

An Equal Opportunity Workplace

At X, we don't just accept difference - we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products and our community. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.

If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please contact us at x-accommodation-request@x.team.

Apply Now

Fields marked with * are required

Are you actively enrolled in a Master or PhD Program?*
Select the closest target for your graduation*
Are you currently or were you previously an Alphabet employee, contractor, or intern?*
Application consent for X*

By clicking the “I Accept” button you expressly give your consent for the collection and use of your information as described at https://www.google.com/about/careers/privacy/.  I consent to the processing of my information as described in that policy including that, in limited circumstances, my information may be shared with trusted third parties to assist in certain phases of the hiring process (such as conducting background checks).

PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.

Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability

Form CC-305
Page 1 of 1
OMB Control Number 1250-0005
Expires 04/30/2026

Why are you being asked to complete this form?

We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years.

Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. Your decision to complete the form and your answer will not harm you in any way. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp.

How do you know if you have a disability?

A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to:

  • Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally)
  • Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS
  • Blind or low vision
  • Cancer (past or present)
  • Cardiovascular or heart disease
  • Celiac disease
  • Cerebral palsy
  • Deaf or serious difficulty hearing
  • Diabetes
  • Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders
  • Epilepsy or other seizure disorder
  • Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome
  • Intellectual or developmental disability
  • Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD
  • Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
  • Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports
  • Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS)
  • Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities
  • Partial or complete paralysis (any cause)
  • Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema
  • Short stature (dwarfism)
  • Traumatic brain injury
DisabilityStatus

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.

VeteranStatus

Voluntary Self-Identification


For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in X, the moonshot factory’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Race
Gender