Applied AI & Research Summer Associate

Passionate about precision medicine and advancing the healthcare industry?

Recent advancements in underlying technology have finally made it possible for AI to impact clinical care in a meaningful way. Tempus' proprietary platform connects an entire ecosystem of real-world evidence to deliver real-time, actionable insights to physicians, providing critical information about the right treatments for the right patients, at the right time.

Tempus is seeking a highly qualified advanced-degree Machine Learning Summer Associate to work with us for the summer of 2026. We are looking for people who can change the world.

Our goal is to provide you with a comprehensive overview of what it’s like to work at Tempus and the chance to have a true impact. We hope that at the end of your internship, you leave with a deeper understanding and appreciation for Tempus’ profound goals and mission;  to connect an entire ecosystem of real-world evidence to deliver real-time, actionable insights to physicians, providing critical information about the right treatments for the right patients, at the right time.

As a Summer Intern at Tempus, you will:

• Apply skills and knowledge learned in the classroom to on-the-job experiences

• Work on comprehensive, value-added project(s) that help enhance the fields of science and technology 

• Collaborate with teams/colleagues in a fast-paced environment 

• Gain professional development & build relationships with peers from across the country 

Key responsibilities:

• Work closely with senior machine learning scientists to design and execute pipelines for pre-training of Large Language Models and multimodal models using massive clinical datasets. Research and implement advanced post-training techniques (e.g. SFT, RLHF, DPO) to align foundation models with complex clinical reasoning and safety guidelines, moving beyond simple prompt engineering.

• Experiment with model architectures and optimization techniques (e.g. sparse attention, parameter-efficient fine-tuning, quantization) to improve training throughput and inference latency.

• Collaborate across multidisciplinary teams, including ML scientists, product and engineers, to translate research into practical solutions.

Anticipated Summer Project(s):

• Project A: Investigating scaling laws and transfer learning efficacy when adapting general-domain open-source LLMs to specialized oncology and pathology domains.

• Project B: Developing novel objective functions for joint training of text and structured molecular data to create a unified healthcare foundation model.

Qualifications:

• Pursuing a Master’s or Ph.D. (advanced degree graduation between winter of 2026 and summer of 2027) in Computer Science, Data Science, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology or a related field.

• Deep theoretical and practical understanding of LLM training lifecycles, including pre-training, instruction tuning, and alignment.

• Proficiency in programming languages like Python, experience with machine learning frameworks and libraries, familiarity with common tools for data processing and analysis.

• Hands-on experience with distributed training frameworks and training models on multi-GPU clusters.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in a variety of settings and media.

• A self-starter with the ability to work independently as well as in collaboration with others in a fast-paced environment is critical. Be ready to fly the plane as you’re still building it!

Additional Details:

• You will spend 9 or 11 weeks working in our Chicago office. The internship will be a hybrid, onsite 3 days/week with the option to work remotely the remaining days.

• The program will start in early June and run through August.

• A competitive hourly wage will be provided for the summer employment and a relocation bonus to help offset some of the relocation costs and resources to help you find housing.

CHI: $35/HR

The expected salary range above is applicable if the role is performed from Illinois and may vary for other locations (California, Colorado, New York). Actual salary may vary based on qualifications and experience. Tempus offers a full range of benefits, which may include incentive compensation, restricted stock units, medical and other benefits depending on the position.

We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.