Machine Learning Intern

WHAT MAKES US EPIC? At the core of Epic’s success are talented, passionate people. Epic prides itself on creating a collaborative, welcoming, and creative environment. Whether it’s building award-winning games or crafting engine technology that enables others to make visually stunning interactive experiences, we’re always innovating. Being Epic means being a part of a team that continually strives to do right by our community and users. We’re constantly innovating to raise the bar of engine and game development. ENGINEERING - EPIC RESEARCH What We Do Epic Research conducts state-of-the-art research in machine learning, AI, character animation, and digital humans. We work with leading universities and product teams to bring new research into games like Fortnite, Unreal Engine, MetaHuman, and the tools creators use every day. MACHINE LEARNING RESEARCH INTERNSHIP AT EPIC GAMES What You'll Do Epic Games is looking for current PhD students and recent PhD graduates (within 12 months of graduation) for paid research internships, working on state-of-the-art machine learning across our ecosystem. Epic makes Unreal Engine, which powers creative work across many industries, alongside some of the world's most popular games, including Fortnite and Rocket League. Through these products, ML research at Epic reaches millions of creators and players every day. AI is reshaping the games industry, and Epic Research - led by Lucia Specia and Michael Black - is at the center of that shift. We're looking for talented interns who want to be part of it. In this role, you will Work with our team of research scientists and engineers at the intersection of vision, language, speech processing, embodied agents, and game development to create state-of-the-art machine learning models in a range of areas - research topics of interest include: AI-backed interactive characters: LLMs for conversational characters, memory systems, automated evals, animation, etc. Game agents: vision-language-action, game-state agents, etc. 3D human and object tracking Reinforcement learning for embodied behavior Speech systems and conversational agents World building and game logic generation : video models, 2D- 3D scene building, etc. AI-assisted game development , e.g. the next generation of Epic Developer Assistant for UE and UEFN Embodied and physical intelligence including human-object interaction Multi-modal diffusion models Player safety : AI-alignment, content moderation, etc. Improved user experience : personalised game recommendation, game representation, spam detection, etc. Content localization : (multimodal) translation, quality assurance, etc. Model distillation for realtime performance What we're looking for An ongoing or recently completed (within the last 12 months) PhD in Computer Science, Mathematics, AI or a related field A record of publication in top conferences/journals Experience implementing deep learning algorithms for problems in computer vision, natural language processing, or speech/audio processing Hands-on knowledge of state-of-the-art ML methods, such as Transformers, diffusion models, and reinforcement learning Experience with post-training foundation models, including SFT, preference training, and reinforcement learning Excellent AI coding and experimental engineering skills Desirable: game development experience in either C++ or C# Internship Details Duration: 5-12 months initially (depending on your location), with flexible start-dates throughout 2026/2027 Hours: full-time (40 hours/week) or part-time (20 hours/week) Location: Select regions within the UK, US or Canada Employment Authorization : You must hold an existing right to work in the UK, US or Canada for the full duration of the internship - Visa sponsorship or support is unavailable for this role Publishing : Research by Epic interns is regularly published in top-tier conferences This inte