{"id":1005786,"url":"https://alion.io/job/visa-staff-research-scientist-intern-phd-agentic-ai","title":"Staff Research Scientist, Intern - PhD Agentic AI","company":{"id":83,"name":"Visa","domain":"visa.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/visa","size_band":"5000+","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":85,"open_postings":129,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.581,"repost_share":0.031,"time_to_fill_p50_days":33,"computed_at":"2026-11-05T05:54:30Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"intern","employment_type":"internship","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"explicit","locations":["Austin, United States"],"countries":["US"],"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":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"ChatGPT","optional":false},{"name":"Copilot","optional":false},{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Guardrails","optional":false},{"name":"Multi-Agent Systems","optional":false},{"name":"Quantization","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":true},{"name":"Java","optional":true},{"name":"LLM","optional":true},{"name":"Python","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-17T16:05:40Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-17","last_verified_at":"2026-11-05T10:31:41Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":48,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":48},"description":"About Us\nVisa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.\nAt Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale - tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world.\nJoin Visa and do work that matters - to you, to your community, and to the world. Progress starts with you.\nJob Description\nVisa’s Internship Program offers a 12-week immersive experience where you’ll work on impactful projects that advance Visa’s mission. As a Visa intern, you’ll build meaningful connections, strengthen your communication and business skills, and gain hands-on experience in a dynamic, global environment.\nYou’ll have access to interactive workshops and learning sessions designed to build expertise, expand industry knowledge, and elevate your professional skills. You’ll not only learn, you’ll contribute, collaborate, and innovate. Beyond professional development, enjoy social events that foster community and connection.\nThe program culminates in a final presentation, where you’ll share your project achievements and recommendations with Visa leaders-a chance to demonstrate impact and growth.\nOur Team\nVisa Research expands Visa’s technology research capabilities globally, conducting both applied and fundamental research. We partner closely with technology, product teams, academics, and governments to explore and develop technologies critical to the future of payments.\nArtificial Intelligence\nThe GenAI Research team drives purpose-driven research to advance the next generation of AI for secure, intelligent, and scalable commerce. Our work spans:\nAgentic AI: autonomous and collaborative AI agents for reasoning, planning, safe system interaction, and applications such as agentic commerce, enterprise AI workflows, and AI coding.\nJob Duties\nConduct research to improve AI agent reliability, reduce hallucinations, and advance safety, security, and ethical alignment.\nDesign techniques to enhance AI agent efficiency, such as model compression, quantization, fine-tuning strategies, and inference optimization.\nDevelop and evaluate secure access control and guardrail systems that promote responsible AI interactions.\nInvestigate multi-agent architectures for secure, coordinated, and efficient collaboration.\nBuild tools and frameworks to benchmark agent safety, robustness, and performance.\nPrototype and experiment to translate research ideas into practical AI capabilities.\nContribute to research publications, patents, and technical reports where appropriate.\nAll Visa roles require digital fluency, including the ability to work with emerging technologies such as Generative AI tools (e.g.ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot) to support everyday work.\n\nVisa requires at least 3 days in office, expectations of these days will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.Qualifications\nBasic Qualifications\nStudents pursuing a Ph.D. with a graduation date in December 2027 or later\n\nPreferred Qualifications\nStrong research record demonstrated by publications, patents, conference presentations, or technical contributions.\nResearch experience in AI agents, AI safety, security, alignment, trustworthy AI, or reliable LLM systems.\nExperience with multi-agent systems, agent frameworks, planning, or evaluation techniques.\nKnowledge of techniques for reducing hallucinations, enhancing factuality, enabling guardrails, enforcing policies, or building secure AI systems.\nExperience applying efficiency methods such as compression, quantization, fine-tuning, or inference optimization.\nProficiency in programming languages such as Python, C++, Java, or similar.\nStrong communication, collaboration, and analytical problem-solving skills.\nAbility to innovate, adapt to ambiguity, and tackle complex research challenges. We value curiosity and continuous learning.\nU.S. APPLICANTS ONLY: The estimated hourly range for a new hire into this position is $56.00 to $63.00 which may include potential sales incentive payments (if applicable). Salary may vary depending on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location.\n\nInformation for US Applicants\nFor roles located in the US, the estimated hourly rate is $56.00 to $63.00 USD. The hourly rate may vary depending on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location.Work Hours\nVaries upon the needs of the department.\nTravel Requirements\nThis position requires travel 5-10% of the time.\nMental/Physical Requirements\nThis position will be performed in an office setting. The position will require the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, frequently operate standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.\nVisa is an EEO Employer\nQualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protect veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5342,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"phd","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Continuous learning","Professional development"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Artificial Intelligence","Cards & Card Issuing","Payment Processing & Gateways"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-17T16:05:40Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 351 · green card filings: 33","filings_12m":351,"filings_prev_12m":468,"green_card_filings_12m":33,"median_offered_wage_usd":151211,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-29T16:27:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":167}],"liveness":{"score":24,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.541,"p_room":0.44,"age_days":48,"expected_fill_days":33,"reasons":["conf:4","stale_co","velocity","win:tail","crowd:junior,brand"],"computed_at":"2026-11-05T05:54:30Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/visa-staff-research-scientist-intern-phd-agentic-ai","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/visa-staff-research-scientist-intern-phd-agentic-ai.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-05T14:09:11Z","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":18244,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-06T00:00:00Z"}},"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":83},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=83"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fvisa-staff-research-scientist-intern-phd-agentic-ai"},{"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%2Fvisa-staff-research-scientist-intern-phd-agentic-ai"},{"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%2Fvisa-staff-research-scientist-intern-phd-agentic-ai"},{"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/visa-staff-research-scientist-intern-phd-agentic-ai\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fvisa-staff-research-scientist-intern-phd-agentic-ai"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":1005786}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"visa.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":1005786},"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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