AI Engineer Intern

7-Eleven is an iconic family of brands with over 86,000 locations, surpassing every retailer in the world. We revolutionize convenience, restaurants and fuel through cutting edge innovation - working hard to be the customer's first choice. 7-Eleven empowers our employees to "activate awesome" and make a meaningful impact in their stores and communities every day. If you're ready to grow, lead and make a difference, come join our team and help shape the future of convenience.

We Began As An Original. We Remain An Original At The Top Of The Convenience Industry. Our company invented the concept of convenience retailing. But we didn’t stop there. 7-Eleven® has captured the world with a proven willingness and ability to innovate. We were the first company in America to offer fresh-brewed to-go coffee. More than six million of our Slurpee® beverages have been sipped since 1966. And, to continuously stay ahead of the curve, we introduce more than 2,500+ new products each year.

With over 77,000 global locations, 7-Eleven Inc. is the world’s largest operator, franchiser and licensor of convenience stores and is also one of the nation’s largest independent gasoline retailers. The company continues to achieve operational accolades, win awards in franchising and drive innovation in retail in the mission to make life a little easier for our guests by being where they need us, when they need us.

Launch your career with real-world impact. Our Internship Program gives you the opportunity to build deep experience in a specific functional area while contributing to a meaningful business project. Build your professional network, learn directly from senior leaders, and gain a behind-the-scenes view of how the business works - bringing our strategy to life. With guidance from a dedicated coach and opportunities to connect across the organization, you will build valuable relationships, broaden your business perspective, and finish the summer by showcasing your work to functional leaders.

The Experience:

The paid internship takes place during Summer 2027. You will gain practical experience, grow your professional network, develop in-demand skills, and help shape the future of merchandising at the world’s largest convenience retailer.

About this opportunity

As an AI Engineer Intern, you will join a multidisciplinary team of senior engineers, API engineers, and AI engineers building customer-facing AI products (conversational shopping and customer support agents) and the AI platform behind them: an AI gateway with model routing, an agent builder framework, MCP services, and observability and evaluation tooling.

This is a hands-on internship. You will own a scoped project from prototype to a demo-ready deliverable, working inside real code, real pipelines, and real engineering standards, with a dedicated mentor and regular code reviews. Interns typically spend about 70% of their time building and 30% learning, pairing, and presenting.

What you will do

• Build and test LLM-powered features such as tool and function calling, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and multi-step agent workflows in Python and/or Node.js.
• Develop evaluation harnesses for LLM applications, including golden datasets, regression tests, automated scoring, and trace review.
• Help instrument AI services for observability: tracing, prompt and version tracking, tool-call monitoring, latency, token usage, and cost.
• Experiment with prompts, context design, and retrieval quality; compare models on accuracy, latency, and cost, and document the trade-offs.
• Contribute to the AI platform by building small services, API integrations, SDK samples, or developer tooling that helps other teams adopt the AI gateway and agent framework.
• Write clean, tested, documented code, and participate in code reviews, sprint ceremonies, and design discussions.
• Apply responsible-AI practices, including guardrails, PII handling, and safety testing, in every project.
• Present your project results and recommendations to the team and leadership at the end of the internship.

Required qualifications

• Currently pursuing a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science, Machine Learning, Mathematics, or a related field, with an expected graduation date at least one semester and no more than one year after the internship.
• Proficiency in Python; working knowledge of at least one other language such as JavaScript/TypeScript (Node.js) or Java.
• Understanding of software fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, REST APIs, and Git workflows.
• Familiarity with LLM concepts such as prompting, embeddings, RAG, and tool calling, gained through coursework, personal projects, or hackathons.
• Strong problem-solving skills, curiosity, and a willingness to learn quickly in a fast-moving field.
• Clear written and verbal communication; comfortable asking questions and giving and receiving feedback.

Preferred qualifications

• Hands-on experience with LLM frameworks such as LangChain/LangGraph, or with model APIs from OpenAI, Google (Gemini/Vertex AI), Anthropic, or Amazon Bedrock.
• Experience with vector databases or search (for example, pgvector, OpenSearch, MongoDB Atlas), and basic SQL or NoSQL databases.
• Exposure to cloud platforms (AWS or GCP), containers (Docker), and CI/CD.
• Familiarity with LLM observability and evaluation tools (for example, Langfuse, LangSmith, OpenTelemetry).
• Interest in AI safety, guardrails, and responsible-AI practices.
• Personal projects, open-source contributions, research, or prior internships involving AI/ML or agentic systems (link your GitHub or portfolio).

If an hourly or salary range is included in this ad it represents the range 7-Eleven in good faith believes is the range of compensation for this role at the time of this posting. The Company may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range. This range is only applicable for jobs to be performed in this state. This range may be modified in the future. No amount is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable under the terms and conditions of the applicable policies and plans. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, long-term incentive compensation, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole discretion, consistent with the law.

For a general description of all benefits 7-Eleven is offering in the US for the position, please visit this link.

For a general description of all benefits 7-Eleven is offering in Canada for the position, please visit this link.