AI Applied Scientist - PhD Intern, Foundational IQ

About the teamZillow AI’s Foundational IQ group builds the core intelligence that powers search, discovery, and conversational experiences like Zillow Copilot. We combine text, imagery, geospatial and time‑series signals to learn rich representations of homes, neighborhoods, and shopper intent, then use them to improve user experiences on Zillow. Our team operates as applied researchers who ship: we prototype quickly, evaluate rigorously (offline metrics and online experiments), and partner closely with product and engineering to bring models to production. We care deeply about helpfulness, safety, and fairness, including domain‑specific, fair‑housing‑aware evaluation, and we invest in modern ML platforms, data governance, and observability to run at national scale. The result is AI that reduces friction, increases confidence, and makes complex home decisions feel simpler for millions of people.About the roleAs a PhD Research Intern on the Foundational IQ team, you will help train and adapt large models that better understand homes and users, advancing representation learning, multimodal modeling, user modeling, and reinforcement/sequential decision‑making for real‑world problems at Zillow scale. You’ll tailor and evaluate LLMs and multimodal foundation models to our domain, build agentic workflows that plan and act across multi‑step tasks, and define success via domain‑specific metrics emphasizing helpfulness, safety, and fairness. You’ll move quickly from prototype to impact, running rigorous offline evaluations and online experiments, collaborating with applied scientists, engineers, and product partners, and contributing to platform capabilities that power experiences like Zillow Copilot. Along the way you’ll author clear research docs, share results internally, and have opportunities to publish and present your work.Responsibilities include: Research and develop methods for adapting LLMs and foundation models with Zillow’s domain-specific dataBuild and evaluate multimodal models that combine text, images, geospatial and tabular signals for home and user understanding.Explore reinforcement learning and sequential decision-making for long‑horizon, user‑centric outcomesPrototype agentic workflows; define success metrics and run rigorous offline/online evaluationsPartner across science, engineering, product, and design; share results via docs, presentations, and publicationsThis role has been categorized as a Remote position. “Remote” employees do not have a permanent corporate office workplace and, instead, work from a physical location of their choice, which must be identified to the Company. U.S. employees may live in any of the 50 United States, with limited exceptions.In California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Washington state, and Washington DC the standard base pay range for this role is $104,000.00 - $166,000.00 annually. This base pay range is specific to these locations and may not be applicable to other locations.In Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont the standard base pay range for this role is $104,000.00 - $166,000.00 annually. The base pay range is specific to these locations and may not be applicable to other locations.Who you areCurrently enrolled in a PhD program in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence or a related field with a strong research track recordExperience in one or more of the following:LLMs: instruction tuning/fine‑tuning, prompting, and evaluation/measurementMultimodal learning (image + text; familiarity with audio or geospatial a plus)Representation learning with limited labels (self/semi/weakly-supervised)User modeling for personalization systemsReinforcement learning or sequential decision‑makingEvaluating generative/agentic systems; privacy‑aware and responsible AI practices (e.g., fair‑housing considerations) are a plusProficiency in Python and modern ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face)Clear communication and a collaborative mindset; motivated to publish at top venues​Here at Zillow - we value the experience and perspective of candidates with non-traditional backgrounds. We encourage you to apply if you have transferable skills or related experiences.Get to know usAt Zillow, we’re reimagining how people move—through the real estate market and through their careers. As the most-visited real estate platform in the U.S., we help customers navigate buying, selling, financing and renting with greater ease and confidence. Whether you're working in tech, sales, operations, or design, you’ll be part of a company that's reshaping an industry and helping more people make home a reality.Zillow is honored to be recognized among the best workplaces in the country. Zillow was named one of FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For® in 2025, and included on the PEOPLE Companies That Care® 2025list, reflecting our commitment to creating an innovative, inclusive, and engaging