AI Software Development Engineer - Intern

AI Engineer - Agentic AI Systems (Fall Intern)

AI is shifting from models to autonomous systems. At Altera, we are building agentic AI platforms tightly coupled with FPGA acceleration, enabling intelligent systems that can reason, act, and scale in real‑world environments.

This role is designed for high‑potential engineers early in their careers who want to:

• Work on cutting‑edge AI (LLMs + agents + RAG)
• Gain exposure to hardware‑software co‑design
• Grow quickly into technical leaders in AI systems

• Develop LLM‑powered agents that use tools, APIs, and data to complete complex tasks
• Implement RAG pipelines for large‑scale knowledge integration
• Ship end‑to‑end systems from data ingestion → reasoning → action

• Design multi‑step reasoning workflows, not just prompt calls
• Evaluate and improve model behavior (accuracy, latency, cost)
• Work with both open‑source and frontier models

• Collaborate with FPGA/ASIC teams on hardware‑aware AI design
• Learn how AI systems are optimized across CPU / GPU / FPGA
• Explore efficient inference and system‑level performance tradeoffs

• Develop reusable components for memory and context management
• Develop reusable components for tool integration
• Develop reusable components for knowledge retrieval
• Contribute to internal AI platforms used across teams

$48/hr - $52/hr USD (Bay Area, California)

• Currently pursuing a Master's or PhD in CS, EE, or related field

• Strong coding skills in Python (C++ is a plus)
• Hands‑on experience building AI/ML projects or backend distributed systems
• Solid fundamentals in data structures and system design basics

• Built a non‑trivial AI project, open‑source contribution, or research prototype
• Learn new frameworks quickly and ship working systems
• Curious about how systems work end‑to‑end, not just models

• Experience with Lang Chain, Llama Index, or similar
• Experience with vector databases (FAISS, Milvus, etc.)
• Exposure to RAG, prompt engineering, or agent workflows
• Experience with hardware acceleration or performance optimization

• Work directly with senior architects and domain experts

• Progress toward Senior Engineer → Architect roles

• Exposure to modern AI systems (LLMs, agents)
• Exposure to hardware acceleration (FPGA/ASIC)

• Build production systems, not demos
• Work used in real engineering workflows

• Combines Agentic AI systems, EDA/semiconductor domain, and hardware‑aware AI optimization

Student / Intern (Fixed Term)

Shift 1 (United States of America)

San Jose, California, United States

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, religious creed, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, military and veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, gender, gender expression, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by local law, regulation, or ordinance.

We use artificial intelligence to screen, assess, or select applicants for the position. Applicants must be eligible for any required U.S. export authorizations.