Hardware Machine Learning PhD Research Internship

Location: Chicago, United States

Base salary: $225,000 per year

Company

hirify.global is a research-driven trading firm building proprietary systems and algorithms with quantitative modeling, machine learning, and advanced engineering.

What you will do

• Architect and develop an ML-focused research project based on real-world use cases.
• Work with hardware engineers to implement, verify, and deploy ML inference solutions.
• Evaluate research in neural architecture search, machine learning systems, and quantization methods.
• Present findings to the team and deliver a prototype or benchmark for continued development.
• Learn hardware design fundamentals from RTL developers and assess research through performance, engineering cost, and industry impact.

Requirements

• Currently enrolled in a PhD program in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, or a related field.
• Strong understanding of hardware constraints and design trade-offs, including pipelining, resource utilization, and fixed-point arithmetic.
• Experience with VHDL, SystemVerilog, HLS tools, or ML-to-hardware frameworks such as hls4ml, FINN, or Vitis AI.
• Understanding of neural network architectures, inference optimization, quantization, and ML frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.
• Proficiency in Python or similar languages for tooling, testing, and simulation.
• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across technical and non-technical disciplines.

Culture & Benefits

• Work alongside engineers in a demanding low-latency computing environment.
• Research has a direct impact on low-latency ML inference and hardware acceleration.
• Full-time, permanent positions are eligible for a discretionary bonus.
• Benefits include paid leave and insurance.