Innovation Graduate Intern - AI & Machine Learning

WHO YOU’LL WORK WITH

This internship is part of Nike’s Advanced Product Intelligence team, a group within the Advanced Innovation Collective, that focuses on building intelligent capabilities for designers, engineers, and creators to reimagine the future of physical product design. During your internship, you’ll work closely with multidisciplinary teammates across ML Engineering, Computational Engineering, Generative AI Design, and Data Analysis.  

WHAT YOU’LL WORK ON

In the role of an AI/ML Engineer Intern, you will apply your AI/ML expertise to help teams explore, evaluate, and improve product concepts faster. You will build intelligent models, workflows, and prototypes that use product performance data to accelerate the product innovation process. You will lead or collaborate on efforts such as:  

• Prototyping AI/ML tools that support engineering and creative workflows for footwear and apparel design and simulation
• Exploring applications of AI/ML and product performance data to engineering simulation workflows, including physics-based modeling, FEA, optimization, and virtual product development
• Training lightweight, domain-specific predictive ML models using generated, simulated, experimental, or curated datasets
• Building interactive prototypes or internal tools that make intelligent capabilities usable and understandable by Design and Engineering teammates

Over the course of the internship, you’ll work alongside a passionate and multidisciplinary team that’s shaping the future of product innovation at Nike. You’ll present your project to stakeholders at the end of the internship and contribute to documentation that helps scale your work beyond the summer. And finally, you’ll walk away with meaningful, real-world experience at the intersection of AI/ML and breakthrough products that make athletes* better.

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR

We’re looking for a graduate-level engineering intern with a strong foundation in machine learning and artificial intelligence who is eager to apply those skills to real-world challenges in product innovation. Candidates with experience in computational engineering, mechanical engineering, simulation, digital product development, or physics-based modeling are especially encouraged to apply.

This internship will be project-based, with room for tailoring based on your interests and strengths. Our ideal candidate brings not only technical capability, but also a self-directed, builder mindset and a curiosity for solving ambiguous and novel problems. You love digging into real-world datasets, training models, testing outputs—and improving them. You’re as excited by open-ended creative problems as you are by well-defined engineering challenges.

• Currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Science, Computational Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related technical field with a graduation date between Winter 2027 and Summer 2028
• Strong foundational understanding of core machine learning concepts (e.g., supervised & unsupervised learning, neural network architectures, model training and evaluation, tradeoffs in model selection, overfitting and underfitting behavior)
• Hands-on experience building AI/ML-powered systems, workflows, or technical prototypes (either academic, personal, or professional)
• Experience in one or more relevant areas, such as surrogate modeling, computer vision, transformers, 3D geometry, or simulation data
• Exposure to engineering simulation methods such as finite element analysis (FEA), computational modeling, optimization, or design exploration
• Proficiency in Python and commonly used ML libraries (e.g., PyTorch, OpenCV, NumPy, pandas, TensorFlow, scikit-learn)
• Comfort navigating ambiguous problem spaces and proposing your own ideas or approaches
• Demonstrated ability to communicate technical findings to diverse audiences in verbal and written form

This is a 10-week paid internship opportunity with relocation assistance. Curious to know what it’s like to be part of a world-class Internship Program? Check out our recap video from last summer: Nike Internship Program Recap Video 

We offer a number of accommodations to complete our interview process including screen readers, sign language interpreters, accessible and single location for in-person interviews, closed captioning, and other reasonable modifications as needed. If you discover, as you navigate our application process, that you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please complete the Candidate Accommodation Request Form.