{"id":572391,"url":"https://alion.io/job/cantina-research-intern","title":"Research Intern","company":{"id":6569,"name":"Cantina","domain":"cantina.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/cantina","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":91,"open_postings":13,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.154,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":74,"computed_at":"2026-10-31T05:58:55Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"intern","employment_type":"internship","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"explicit","locations":["Singapore"],"countries":["SG"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Computer Vision","optional":false},{"name":"Diffusion Models","optional":false},{"name":"JAX","optional":false},{"name":"Knowledge Distillation","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Evaluation","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Model Distillation","optional":false},{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":false},{"name":"Post-training","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Reward Modeling","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-07T07:24:06Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-07","last_verified_at":"2026-10-31T23:46:07Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":54,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":[],"days_open":53},"description":"About Cantina\nCantina Labs is a social AI company developing a suite of advanced video generation models. We bring characters to life, transforming how people tell stories, connect, and create. We build and power ecosystems. Cantina, our flagship social AI platform, is just the beginning.\nAbout the Internship\nCantina is growing its research lab in Singapore, and we are looking for exceptional research interns to work with us on the next generation of video models in October 2026.\nThis is a three month onsite internship designed to give you meaningful ownership of a well-defined research or engineering problem. You will be matched with a project based on your background and interests, working closely with a senior mentor from initial problem formulation through experimentation, evaluation, and, where appropriate, submission to a leading AI conference.\nProjects may focus on post-training and inference efficiency for video generation models, reward modeling and preference-based optimization multimodal data systems, or scalable infrastructure for video model training. The primary focus will be your core project, with opportunities to contribute to applied or product-adjacent work where relevant.\nWhat You’ll Work On\nDepending on your project, you may:\nResearch and develop distillation methods for large-scale diffusion and flow-based video generation models, including guidance and adversarial distillation\n\nExplore techniques that reduce inference cost while preserving or improving generation quality\n\nDevelop reward models and preference-based optimization methods to improve aesthetics, motion quality, temporal consistency, and prompt adherence\n\nStudy how base-model behavior affects post-training outcomes and use experimental findings to inform model development\n\nDesign rigorous evaluations and conduct large-scale experiments on generative video models\n\nContribute to evaluation harnesses, model integrations, research tooling, or other product-adjacent projects related to your core work\n\nDocument and communicate your findings through research reports, internal presentations, demonstrations, and potential conference submissions\n\nYou may be a good fit if you\nAre currently pursuing a PhD or are a final-year master’s student in computer science, machine learning, computer vision, or a related field\n\nHave research experience in generative modeling, computer vision, multimodal learning, or video generation\n\nHave hands on experience with diffusion models, flow-based models, model distillation, reinforcement learning, preference optimization, or related post-training techniques\n\nCan formulate hypotheses, design controlled experiments, analyze results, and communicate conclusions clearly\n\nAre proficient in Python and have hands-on experience with PyTorch, JAX, or another modern machine learning framework\n\nAre comfortable working independently on an open-ended research problem while collaborating closely with a mentor and the broader team\n\nExperience with video, image, audio, or other multimodal data is valuable. Publications at leading venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, or AAAI are a plus, but are not required. We care most about the quality of your thinking, the depth of your technical work, and your ability to learn quickly.\nWhat You Can Expect\nA defined project and named senior mentor before your first day\n\nWeekly one-on-one meetings and clear project milestones\n\nA meaningful compute allocation for your research\n\nThe opportunity to own a complete research or engineering result\n\nFirst-author positioning by default where your contribution supports a publication\n\nTimely internal review of research intended for submission\n\nSupport for conference travel if your paper is accepted\n\nOpportunities to demonstrate your work and receive credit for product contributions\n\nA competitive monthly stipend\n\nVisa and travel support for eligible international candidates\n\nHousing support for qualifying international interns in Singapore\n\nEquipment and resources needed to complete your work\n\nInternship Details\nLocation: Singapore\n\nDuration: Three months\n\nWorking model: Onsite\n\nStart dates: First batch starts in October 2026, second batch starts in January 2027","description_format":"text","description_chars":4220,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"master","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"Singapore","iso":"SG","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["LLM & Generative AI","Generative Video","Multimodal AI","Social Networks"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-09T14:00:29Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":48,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.805,"p_room":0.6,"age_days":53,"expected_fill_days":74,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:late","crowd:junior"],"computed_at":"2026-10-31T05:58:55Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/cantina-research-intern","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/cantina-research-intern.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-01T02:50:36Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":4311,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-02T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":6569},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=6569"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fcantina-research-intern"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fcantina-research-intern"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fcantina-research-intern"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/cantina-research-intern\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fcantina-research-intern"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":572391}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"cantina.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":572391},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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