About the Position

Machine Learning Intern

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

About the Company

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.

Epic Games is a leading interactive entertainment company. For over 30 years we've been making award-winning games and engine technology that empowers others to make visually stunning games and 3D content that bring environments to life like never before. Epic's award-winning Unreal Engine technology not only provides game developers the ability to build high-fidelity, interactive experiences for PC, console, mobile, and VR, it is also a tool being embraced by content creators across a variety of industries such as media and entertainment, automotive, and architectural design.

About the Role

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.

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.

Responsibilities

In this role, you will:

Work with our team of research scientists and programmers 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
- Game agents
- 3D human and object tracking
- Reinforcement learning for embodied behavior
- Speech systems and conversational agents
- World building and game logic generation
- AI-assisted game development
- Embodied and physical intelligence
- Multi-modal diffusion models
- Player safety
- Improved user experience
- Content localization
- Model distillation for realtime performance

Requirements

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 programming skills

Nice to Have

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 North America and Europe
Employment Authorization: You must hold an existing right to work in your given location 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

We Offer

Epic Games deeply values diverse teams and an inclusive work culture, and we are proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. Learn more about our Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Policy here.

Note to Recruitment Agencies: Epic does not accept any unsolicited resumes or approaches from any unauthorized third party (including recruitment or placement agencies) (i.e., a third party with whom we do not have a negotiated and validly executed agreement). We will not pay any fees to any unauthorized third party. Further details on these matters can be found here.

Machine Learning Intern

Job description