2026 PhD Residency - LLM Harness Engineering for Industrial Systems (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 agent harnesses for industrial engineering, system engineering and/or chemical engineering

  1. Collaborate with the X Project team to design and develop Agentic LLM approaches to the project's mission
    1. Understand the project’s goals and challenges and conduct relevant literature surveys.
    2. Suggest agentic workflow solutions in which approaches/models can apply new and existing project workflows
    3. create/train/evaluate agentic AI models, features, components of large scale Agentic AI systems.
  2. Engage with the Intern 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): Year-round rolling basis
  • Duration: a flexible 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 and proficiency in general purpose programming.
  • Demonstrated experience working with physical applications, hardware, or modeling real-world physics to build simulated environments or computational "harnesses" for physical equipment.
  • Deep understanding of how state-of-the-art coding agents work internally (e.g., Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI).
  • Hands-on experience designing and building LLM-powered agent systems with tool design, context management, and multi-agent coordination.

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, ECCV, ICASSP).
  • Experience building verification/feedback loops for LLM agents
  • Experience with harness engineering / context engineering
  • Experience with physics engines, robotics simulators (e.g., MuJoCo, PyBullet, Gazebo), or CAD software to build test environments and digital representations of physical machinery.

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

The US base salary range for this position is $109,000 - $157,000 + benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your location during the hiring process.

Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include benefits.

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