Partner Operations & AI Automation Intern

IDC is building out its partnerships with leading AI and technology companies, and demand on the partnerships team is growing quickly. Join IDC's Partnerships team as our first Partner Operations & AI Automation Co-op/Intern. You'll work directly with the SVP of Product & Strategy and split your time with the office of the CEO to design and build the agentic workflows that give a lean partnerships team outsized leverage, turning manual partner qualification, development, pipeline tracking, and intelligence-gathering into automated, always-on workflows built on Claude and other third-party AI tools.

This is a hands-on build role with direct executive visibility. What you ship becomes a live proof point for how AI-driven automation pays off inside IDC's own operations, not just for IDC's clients. It's also a rare chance to work directly with senior leadership on a strategic priority and see how a global research and advisory firm builds partnerships.

• Design and build agentic workflows (using Claude and other third-party AI tools) that automate partner ops and pipeline management, including CRM hygiene, status tracking, and reporting
• Build automated partner intelligence workflows that monitor and aggregate partner signals, competitive moves, and market data relevant to IDC's P1 partners
• Support automation of partnership qualification, including a rules-based triage/scoring layer for inbound partner opportunities
• Support automation of partnership development workflows where judgment-light and repeatable (e.g., document assembly, follow-up sequencing, status reporting)
• Build and test AI-enabled tools, and prototype lightweight automations and dashboards, that save the team time (research, reporting, drafting, data analysis)
• Support day-to-day partner operations: tracking partner programs, deliverables, timelines, and stakeholder follow-ups
• Help collect, organize, and prioritize partnership use cases as new opportunities emerge
• Prepare briefing materials, summaries, and analysis for leadership
• Document every workflow you build (logic, data sources, and a handoff runbook) so it survives beyond your co-op term and the team can reuse it
• Partner with the Directors of Strategic Partner Development and Partner GTM/Activation to identify and prioritize the highest-leverage manual tasks to automate next, and contribute to partnership initiatives for H1 2027

• Currently enrolled in a graduate degree program in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Science, Business Analytics, or a related technical field
• No prior full-time work experience required; coursework or project experience with AI tools is welcome
• Demonstrated, hands-on AI proficiency: you've built agentic workflows or automations (e.g., LLMs with tool use, prompt design, API integrations, or no-code/low-code platforms) through a personal, academic, or professional project, and you're eager to learn new AI and automation tooling
• Ability to demo and explain an AI automation you've built (the interview process includes a 10-minute live demo of something you've built)
• Comfort with Python, SQL, or similar scripting, or a strong aptitude to learn quickly
• Strong communication and presentation skills, including deck creation (PowerPoint) and the ability to synthesize information clearly for senior audiences
• Strong written communication and documentation habits
• A scrappy, flexible, startup-style approach: you're self-directed, organized, and proactive, you get things done, and you adapt quickly as priorities change
• Comfortable working across several stakeholders in a small team with executive visibility
• Interest in technology markets, partnerships, or business strategy

• Prior internship or…