PhD Machine Learning Intern (Summer 2025)

Company Description

Dropbox isn’t just a workplace—it’s a living lab for more enlightened ways of working. We're a global community of more than 2,000 bold visionaries and resourceful doers who are shaping the future of Dropbox—and with it the future of work. Our Virtual First model combines the flexibility of a distributed workplace with the power of human connection, making space for both meaningful work and meaningful relationships. With our start-up mindset and enterprise-level opportunities, you can be who you are and grow into who you’re meant to be. Here, you can own your impact to make work more intuitive, joyful, and human—for you as a Dropboxer and for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. If you're ready to push boundaries—and yourself— Dropbox is ready for you.

Team Description

The Dropbox Emerging Talent program shapes the future of work by empowering the next generation of innovators. We transform potential into impact by connecting exceptional early-career professionals with meaningful challenges that can touch hundreds of millions of lives. Our program allows interns and apprentices to work alongside industry experts, bringing fresh perspectives while solving interesting problems. We foster growth through hands-on learning, dedicated mentorship, and a vibrant community that supports your journey from day one. If you're ready to launch your career in an environment that combines real-world impact with genuine connection, join our Emerging Talent program. We will be hiring for these departments in 2025: Engineering, Customer Experience, Sales, Legal, Office of the CEO

Role Description

At Dropbox, interns don’t just watch from the sidelines—they’re integral members of the team. As a PhD Machine Learning intern, you’ll partner with world-class engineers and researchers in our New Initiatives organization, where you’ll tackle cutting-edge challenges at the intersection of frontier AI research and real-world application. Throughout your internship, you’ll receive mentorship, collaborate on impactful projects, and help shape the future of Dropbox’s AI strategy.

Within Dropbox, New Initiatives is all about innovation and exploration. Our group builds and experiments with next-generation AI-driven products—from advanced large language models and generative AI prototypes to brand-new user experiences that blend research breakthroughs with Dropbox’s core mission. If you thrive on exploring uncharted territory and rapidly iterating on new ideas, you’ll feel right at home here.

• Explore & Prototype: Investigate cutting-edge research in areas like knowledge distillation, agentic AI, and multilingual LLMs, translating conceptual ideas into working demos or internal proofs of concept.
• Applied AI Research: Work on real-world challenges—e.g., how to efficiently summarize large collections of documents, build agentic workflows, or orchestrate advanced reasoning models—and apply novel techniques to solve them.
• Collaborate & Iterate: Partner closely with product managers, designers, and other engineers to brainstorm innovative applications, gather feedback, and iterate on prototypes.
• Experiment & Evaluate: Design experiments to test your hypotheses, evaluate AI model performance, and analyze user impact. You’ll move quickly, learning what works and discarding what doesn’t.
• Champion New Ideas: Help identify emerging trends in AI that could benefit Dropbox users, providing technical insight and feasibility assessments for future product initiatives.

• PhD Student in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or a closely related field, with a research focus on advanced AI (e.g., NLP, multimodal learning, LLMs, or similar).
• Graduation date in Spring 2026
• Proven experience in applied AI, through research publications, significant projects, or internships where you built or tested advanced ML solutions.
• Strong coding skills (e.g., Python), plus an ability to quickly prototype and iterate on cutting-edge ideas.
• Curiosity and drive to explore novel ML methodologies and translate them into practical applications that solve user needs.

• Research background or publications in top-tier AI/ML conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR).
• Hands-on experience working with large language models, generative AI, or reinforcement learning.
• Familiarity with the end-to-end process of building AI prototypes: from data exploration and model iteration to evaluation and user testing.
• Passion for swiftly moving from idea to experiment, comfortable with ambiguous or evolving project goals.

We welcome candidates who are enthusiastic about pushing the frontiers of AI and applying research to real-world Dropbox challenges. If this sounds like you, we encourage you to apply—help us shape the future of work and collaboration through groundbreaking AI innovations.

Dropbox is an equal opportunity employer. We are a welcoming place for everyone, and we do our best to make sure all people feel supported and connected at work.