About the role#
As a Software Engineer Intern on the Inference Infrastructure team, you will help build the systems that power model development, validation, and deployment across custom hardware at scale. Your work supports the platform that Compiler, SI, and Optimus teams use to develop and validate models on next-generation chips. You will contribute to foundational systems, including cluster orchestration, hardware fleet management, and developer tooling, that determine how quickly the organization moves from a trained model to a deployed artifact.
What you'll do#
- Scale the SI inference cluster, which is the physical and software platform that runs workloads on custom hardware across thousands of boards.
- Improve job scheduling, hardware onboarding, and cluster self-healing systems to maintain high uptime.
- Design and implement inference pipelines that unify evals, sims, rollouts, and visualizations across SI and Optimus teams.
- Build developer tooling to run, validate, and debug compiler-produced artifacts on real hardware at scale.
- Contribute to flashing, inventory management, and fleet management infrastructure for different hardware generations.
- Work with the Compiler, SI, and Optimus teams to identify bottlenecks and build infrastructure to address them.
What you'll need#
- Current enrollment in a Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related degree program.
- An expected graduation date between August 2027 and December 2027.
- Strong programming skills in Python.
- Familiarity with PyTorch, Go, or C++ is a plus.
- Coursework, research, or project experience with distributed systems, job orchestration, reliability, or backend infrastructure.
- Understanding of low-level systems concepts such as networking, file systems, and process management.
- Familiarity with ML inference workloads and the factors that influence performance at scale.
- Ability to navigate ambiguous problems, explore unfamiliar codebases, and drive work to completion with limited oversight.
Location & details#
- This is a full-time, on-site internship based in Palo Alto, California.
- The term is for Summer 2027, starting in May 2027 and running for a minimum of 12 weeks.
About Tesla
Tesla produces electric vehicles, battery storage systems, and solar energy products. Founded in 2003, the company operates six vertically integrated factories across three continents. It is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and employs over 10,000 people. The organization designs, manufactures, sells, and services its products internally.
How to get in at Tesla
Applying early at Tesla provides a distinct advantage because recruiters review candidates before the applicant pool becomes unmanageable. Intern Insider sends an instant alert the moment a role matching your target is published anywhere, so you apply among the first and get seen before the pile grows. Reaching out to the right people often yields better results than submitting to a general queue. Intern Insider surfaces the recruiters behind the company roles so you can contact them directly to ask about the position or a referral, which materially improves your response rates.
