← All roles

PhD Research Intern, AI Accelerator Design and VLSI - 2027

NVIDIA· Intern
Apply on company site
Santa Clara, CA$38/hr - $94/hrinternPosted 3w ago

About the role

PhD-level internship focused on AI HW/SW co-design, accelerator architecture, and VLSI design for AI workloads with opportunities to publish and collaborate with AI researchers and hardware teams.

Responsibilities

  • Accelerator Design: Contribute to novel research advancing the state-of-the-art in the design of accelerators for AI and other high-impact workloads.
  • VLSI: Research creative and innovative ASIC and VLSI design techniques and/or novel digital VLSI circuits. Apply machine learning, agentic AI, and state-of-the-art tools and methodologies to automated ASIC and VLSI design tool flows.
  • AI HW/SW Co-Design: Research and develop creative and innovative numerical methods for quantization, sparsity, or tensor decomposition grounded in computer arithmetic fundamentals and digital VLSI circuits.
  • Collaborate on the development of research prototype testchips.
  • Collaborate with AI researchers and hardware team members in research and product teams.
  • Plan to publish and present your original research.

Qualifications

  • Pursuing a PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.
  • Publication records in leading ML, architecture, VLSI, or circuits conferences.
  • Excellent programming skills in Python/PyTorch and hardware design languages such as SystemVerilog/C++; Experience with High-Level Synthesis (HLS) tools is a plus.
  • VLSI Implementation Skills: Experience in hardware design with proficiency with modern EDA tool flows; Tapeout experience is a plus.
  • Excellent self-motivation, a high degree of creativity, and a passion for research, collaboration skills, and the ability to work effectively within a research team.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with proven experience communicating technical work (e.g., academic presentations, poster sessions); ability to synthesize and explain complex technical concepts.

Skills

Required:PythonPyTorchSystemVerilog/C++EDA tool flowsCommunication
Nice to have:HLS tools

Benefits

  • Intern benefits (see link): https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/benefits/interns/
Last updated Oct 16, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About NVIDIA

World Leader in AI Computing

NVIDIA invents the GPU and drives advances in AI, HPC, gaming, creative design, autonomous vehicles, and robotics.

AIautonomous vehiclesgaminggpugraphics cardhigh performance computingliquid-ai-recruiting-targetllm
Company profileWebsite

More open roles at NVIDIA