Research Scientist Intern (PhD)

Research Scientist Intern (PhD) LocationBerlin; Freiburg; New YorkEmployment TypeInternLocation TypeOn-siteDepartmentEngineering & ScienceScienceWho we areFoundation models transformed text and images. Structured data - the largest and most consequential data format in the world - stayed untouched. Tables run every clinical trial, every financial model, every scientific experiment, every business decision, and no one had built a foundation model that truly understood them.Until now. What LLMs did for language, we're doing for tables. The next modality shift in AI is happening, and we're hiring the team that makes it.Momentum. We pioneered tabular foundation models and are now the world-leading organization in structured-data ML. Our TabPFN v2 model was published as a Nature cover story and set a new state of the art for tabular machine learning. Since release we've scaled model capabilities 20x+, passed 3.5M+ downloads and 7,500+ GitHub stars, and are seeing accelerating adoption across research and industry - from detecting lung disease with Oxford Cancer Analytics to preventing train failures with Hitachi to improving clinical-trial decisions with BostonGene.The hardest work is ahead. We're scaling tabular foundation models to millions of rows, thousands of features, real-time inference, and entirely new data modalities, while building the infrastructure to run them in production across some of the most demanding industries on earth. These are open problems no one else is working on at this level.Our team. We're a small, highly selective team of 30+ engineers, researchers, and GTM specialists, with backgrounds spanning Google, Apple, Amazon, DeepMind, Meta, Microsoft Research, G-Research, Jane Street, Goldman Sachs, and CERN. We're led by Frank Hutter, Noah Hollmann, and Sauraj Gambhir, and advised by world-leading AI researchers including Bernhard Schölkopf and Turing Award winner Yann LeCun. We ship fast, do top-tier research, and hold each other to an extremely high bar.What's next. In 2025 we raised €9m pre-seed led by Balderton Capital, backed by leaders from Hugging Face, DeepMind, and Black Forest Labs. The next phase of growth is here, which makes this an ideal time to join.Core Areas of ImpactYou'll be among the first scientists collaborating and working an entirely new class of AI models, not just incremental improvements. As an early-stage startup working on foundation models for tabular data, we have countless exciting research ideas and problems to explore - you're sure to find challenges that match your interests and expertise. We are working on problems such as:Scaling our transformer architectures from 10K to 1M+ samples while maintaining performanceBuilding multimodal models that combine text and tabular understanding on proprietary dataDeveloping specialized architectures for time series, forecasting, and anomaly detectionCreating efficient inference methods for production deploymentResearching causal understanding in foundation modelsDesigning novel approaches for handling multiple related tablesWhat We're Looking ForCurrently pursuing or holding a PhD in Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field (we will also consider exceptional Master's students)Deep experience with ML frameworks, especially PyTorch and scikit-learnStrong engineering fundamentals with excellent Python expertiseExperience in data-science and working with tabular data or time seriesPublications at top-tier venues (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR) or significant open-source contributionsBenefitsStrong mentorship and professional development opportunitiesWork with state-of-the-art ML architecture, substantial compute resources, and a world-class teamComprehensive benefits including healthcare, transportation, and fitnessLife at Prior LabsWe're a small, ambitious team solving one of the hardest problems in AI, and we're just getting started. You'll work closely with world-class researchers and...