Intelligent Sensing Intern - Low-power Agent Sensing and Computing Systems - Global Frontier Tech Recruitment Program - 2027 Start (PHD)

ByteDance is a company focused on inspiring creativity through innovative products. They are seeking a PhD intern to contribute to research and product development in low-power agent sensing and computing systems, specifically targeting advancements in imaging and sensor technology for AI applications.

What you'll do:

• Design and prototype novel sensor or imaging architectures that move computation closer to the sensing front-end (e.g., near-sensor processing, event-driven capture, learned compression at the pixel level)
• Build and characterize imaging pipelines end-to-end: from optical/sensor physics through ISP to downstream perception models — identify where bits are wasted and where intelligence should be injected
• Leverage understanding of VLM/LLM and world models to inform what information the sensing front-end must preserve, discard, or transform — closing the loop between foundation model requirements and hardware design
• Develop or adapt machine vision models that are co-optimized with hardware constraints (power, bandwidth, latency)

What they're looking for:

• PhD candidate in the field Electrical Engineering, Physics, Computer Engineering, AI, or a related discipline
• Strong foundation in at least one of: imaging systems, sensor technology, or machine learning / computer vision
• Hands-on experience with VLM/LLM, world models, or large-scale vision foundation models, including understanding of data and architectural requirements
• Track record of high impact publication such as Nature, Science, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, SIGGRAPH, or equivalent
• Ability to bridge hardware and algorithm thinking — from device-level concepts to model training workflows
• Strong communication skills with demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively in teams
• Deep experience working across both hardware (e.g., sensors, imaging pipelines) and software/model development
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous environments with an “explorer mindset”
• Experience with AI-assisted development tools in research or engineering workflows
• Multidisciplinary project experience and ability to quickly ramp in unfamiliar domains

Benefits:

• Day one access to health insurance
• Life insurance
• Wellbeing benefits
• 10 paid holidays per year
• 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.