🎁 Give the gift of Extern 🎁
Company Internship Guides
August 3, 2026

Adept AI Internship 2027–2028: What to Know & How to Apply

Everything you need to know about interning at Adept AI in 2027–2028: the $1B-valued AI agent startup's post-Amazon acqui-hire status, estimated $9K–$12K/mo pay, hard LeetCode interviews, and what to do instead.

Written by:

Bifei Wang

Edited by:

No items found.
A graduate student in a plain dark pullover walking through the Mission District in San Francisco on a bright weekday mo
Loading the Elevenlabs Text to Speech AudioNative Player...

Adept AI Internship 2027–2028: Programs, What to Know & How to Apply

Last updated: July 2026

Adept AI raised over $415 million at a roughly $1 billion valuation before Amazon acqui-hired most of its leadership and licensed its core AI agent technology in June 2024. The remaining company operates with approximately 30 employees, and no active internship postings exist on any major job platform as of July 2026. This guide covers what the program looked like, what the technical bar demands, and where to redirect that same ambition right now.

Quick Facts

FactDetail
Where to applyNo active careers page. Monitor adept.ai, LinkedIn, and Wellfound for any future postings
Application window (2027–28)No established cycle. If roles appear, expect postings September through December 2026. Historically ad-hoc given the company's small size
Rolling?Not confirmed. When positions existed, applications were reviewed on an ad-hoc basis. Glassdoor data shows 100% of candidates applied online
EligibilityInferred from full-time roles: pursuing BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or related field. PhD-level research experience likely preferred
Duration12 to 16 weeks (estimated from industry standard for elite AI startups). No intern-specific data available
CompensationEstimated $9,000 to $12,000 per month ($52 to $69/hr) based on full-time engineer comp of $200K to $530K+ and industry comparables. No verified intern pay data exists
Visa sponsorshipAdept filed 13 H-1B LCAs for full-time roles (2023 to 2024). No intern-specific visa data. Given the company's current size, sponsorship is unlikely
LocationsSan Francisco, CA (350 Rhode Island Street). Strict 5-day in-office policy. No remote options documented
# ProgramsNo formal internship tracks. Functional areas historically included ML Research, Agentic AI, Platform Engineering, Applied Science, and Design Engineering

Adept AI was founded by two co-authors of the original Transformer paper and staffed at roughly 150 engineers before Amazon absorbed most of the team. With about 30 employees remaining and zero open roles listed, a formal Summer 2027 internship is unlikely. The technical bar, when positions existed, sat at hard LeetCode and LLM system design.

Externships are short, remote projects where you finish real work for a real company. The Wayfair AI Agent Engineering Externship and Beats by Dre Data Analytics Externship build the agentic AI, coding, and data skills that Adept's technical interviews historically tested. Explore all Externships.


What Is an Adept AI Internship?

An Adept AI internship, when positions existed, placed students directly inside a research lab of roughly 150 engineers building general-purpose AI agents capable of performing any action a human can take on a computer. The company's flagship demonstration, ACT-1, showed an AI navigating web browsers and enterprise tools to complete multi-step workflows. Unlike larger programs with rotational tracks, Adept embedded interns on specific research teams alongside senior scientists, many of whom came from OpenAI, Google Brain, and the original Transformer paper team. The technical bar was comparable to Google DeepMind or OpenAI, but within a startup where every contributor shipped production-visible work. Following Amazon's acqui-hire of most leadership in June 2024, the remaining company operates at roughly 30 people under new CEO Zach Brock, focusing on agentic AI solutions. No active internship postings exist as of July 2026, though the research experience and technical caliber the company demanded remain the benchmark for AI agent roles across the industry.

A graduate student in a plain dark pullover walking through the Mission District in San Francisco on a bright weekday mo

When Do Adept AI Internship Applications Open for 2027–2028?

Adept AI never established a formal recruiting calendar. The company was too small and too short-lived in its original form to build a campus pipeline. For the 2025 and 2026 cycles, roles were posted and filled on an ad-hoc basis, with the full hiring process taking approximately 90 days from application to decision. Following the June 2024 Amazon acqui-hire, the remaining team of roughly 30 has not posted any open positions. If Summer 2027 roles appear, expect them between September and December 2026. The actionable insight: rather than waiting for a posting that may never come, build the same skills the Adept bar tested and direct that preparation toward the companies where its former team now works.

Now · Summer 2026YOU ARE HERE

No Adept AI internship postings are live, and none are expected given the company's post-acqui-hire state. This is the build window: sharpen ML fundamentals, agentic AI projects, and LeetCode fluency for the companies where Adept's former team now sits (Amazon AGI, Meta, Databricks).

The Wayfair AI Agent Engineering Externship and the Beats by Dre Data Analytics Externship are remote, real-company projects that build the agentic AI and data skills Adept's interviews historically demanded.
September to December 2026EXPECTEDROLLING — APPLY WEEK 1

If Adept posts Summer 2027 roles, they would likely appear in this window. Monitor adept.ai, LinkedIn, and Wellfound. Given the company's roughly 30-person headcount, openings are unlikely.

January to March 2027EXPECTED

Interview window if roles are posted. Based on Glassdoor data, expect a roughly 90-day process: recruiter call, 1-hour hard LeetCode phone screen, then onsite with two coding rounds, one LLM system design round, and one hiring manager conversation.

Summer 2027

If offered, expect a 12- to 16-week placement in San Francisco, 5 days in-office. The former Adept team at Amazon built Nova Act, which reached the top of the REALBench agent leaderboard, so the agentic AI space these skills serve is growing regardless of where Adept itself lands.

Why You Must Apply the Week Applications Open

The honest answer is that timing matters less here than at larger companies, because Adept AI is not actively hiring. With roughly 30 employees remaining after Amazon absorbed most of the team, no open positions exist on any platform. But the preparation is not wasted. The technical bar Adept set (hard LeetCode, LLM system design, Transformer-native expertise) is the same bar Amazon AGI, Meta FAIR, and Databricks Mosaic now test. So treat the skill-building as portable: drill LeetCode medium-to-hard, build at least one agentic AI project you can demo end-to-end, and set job alerts on LinkedIn for the companies where Adept's co-founders landed. If Adept does post a role, the small team and ad-hoc review mean submitting early matters even more, because a 30-person company fills a single seat fast.

Which Adept AI Internship Programs Should You Target?

Adept AI did not run formally named internship tracks the way larger companies do. With roughly 150 employees pre-acqui-hire and about 30 today, roles mapped to functional areas rather than branded programs. The work areas below reflect the company's historical focus and the agentic AI domain it pioneered.

AreaFocusDurationKey skills
ML ResearchFoundation model research on large language models and multimodal AI for general-purpose agent systems12 to 16 weeksPython, PyTorch, Transformer architectures, LLM training and fine-tuning, deep learning
Agentic AI / Agent SystemsTraining models to interact with software UIs, execute multi-step tasks, and automate enterprise workflows12 to 16 weeksAgent frameworks, computer interaction, workflow automation, reinforcement learning
Platform / Infrastructure EngineeringCompute, data, and serving infrastructure behind Adept's AI models and web interaction software12 to 16 weeksDistributed systems, model serving, infrastructure engineering, Python
Applied Science / Solutions EngineeringTranslating research into customer-facing products, bridging core AI capabilities and enterprise deployment12 to 16 weeksApplied ML, API development, product engineering, customer-facing problem solving
Design EngineeringProduct design and user experience for AI agent interfaces, combining design thinking with engineering12 to 16 weeksUI/UX design, frontend engineering, prototyping, design systems

No active postings exist on Wellfound or Simplify. The former Adept team's work continues at Amazon AGI (Nova Act), Meta FAIR, and Databricks Mosaic, so candidates interested in agentic AI should target those programs directly.

What Are the Eligibility Requirements?

No intern-specific job postings were found. The following requirements are inferred from full-time roles, H-1B filings, and Glassdoor interview data:

Education: pursuing BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or a related quantitative field. PhD-level research experience strongly preferred given the research lab environment.

Technical bar: comparable to Google Brain or DeepMind. Glassdoor rates interviews as "very difficult" with hard LeetCode coding and LLM-specific system design questions.

Work authorization: Adept filed 13 H-1B LCAs for full-time roles in 2023 and 2024, all in San Francisco. No intern-specific visa data exists. Given the current team size of roughly 30, visa sponsorship for interns is unlikely.

Location: San Francisco only, 5 days per week in-office. No remote options documented. One Reddit comment on r/amazonemployees confirmed the strict in-person policy.

Close-up of a minimalist desk arranged for deep coding work, a white ceramic mug of black coffee beside a mechanical key

Does Adept AI Have a GPA or Publication Requirement?

No stated GPA cutoff was found. However, the founding team included two co-authors of the original Transformer paper and alumni of OpenAI and Google Brain. The implicit bar is research depth: publications at NeurIPS, ICML, or similar venues and hands-on experience with large-scale model training would have been strong differentiators. For the roughly 30-person team that remains, the expectation of independence and technical maturity is even higher than at a typical internship.

What Skills Does Adept AI Look For, and How Do You Build Them?

No active Adept AI job descriptions were available during research. The skills below are inferred from full-time role titles (Member of Technical Staff, Research Scientist, Solutions Engineer, Design Engineer, Software Engineer Platform), Glassdoor interview data, and the company's published work on agentic AI. The pattern across H-1B filings and interview reports is clear: Python and deep learning frameworks appear in every technical role, LLM and Transformer expertise in four of five, and agentic AI or workflow automation knowledge in three. The system design round specifically tested LLM-based architectures, not generic distributed systems.

What Adept AI looks for in interns

Skills across 5 Adept AI intern & analyst job descriptions · Adept AI full-time roles, H-1B filings, and Glassdoor interview data (2023 to 2026)

Python & deep learning frameworks (PyTorch)
5 of 5
LLM & Transformer architectures
4 of 5
Agentic AI & workflow automation
3 of 5
Data structures & algorithms (LeetCode hard)
3 of 5
Distributed systems & model serving
3 of 5
System design (LLM-specific)
2 of 5
Frontend engineering
2 of 5
Research methodology & experimentation
2 of 5
Communication & collaboration
2 of 5

Method: analysis of Adept AI full-time role categories from H-1B filings (13 LCAs, 2023 to 2024), Glassdoor interview reviews, and company publications. No active intern JDs were available. Frequencies represent appearance across five distinct role categories.

How Is Demand for ML Engineer Interns Moving Right Now?

ML and AI intern hiring right now: July 2026

Across US machine-learning and AI intern postings tracked this week · aggregate market data, all employers

=
About 637 US software-engineer-intern postings were open on July 11, holding near the roughly 650 tracked at the start of the month
ML pays a premium: machine-learning-intern postings advertise about $87,700 versus about $83,900 for general software-engineer-intern roles
The bench you convert into is deep: 136,389 US software-engineer postings are open right now at roughly $164k mean advertised salary

July 2026 is this tracker's baseline month, so month-over-month shifts show up at the August update. The signal today is level: intern demand is steady, and the ML-heavy end of it pays more.

Method: aggregate analysis of US software-engineer-intern, machine-learning-intern, and software-engineer postings via Adzuna, July 2026 baseline. The sample indexes a fraction of all US postings, so figures show direction and relative level, not total market share.

Build These Skills Before You Apply

The agentic AI skills Adept tested map directly to remote Externships where you finish a real project before any role opens.

Skill (from real JDs)JD evidenceExternship that builds it
Python, ML frameworks & agent engineeringFull-time roles: "PyTorch, Transformer architectures, AI agent systems, workflow automation"Wayfair AI Agent Engineering
Data analysis, model evaluation & metricsApplied Science roles: "model performance metrics, experiment tracking, statistical analysis"Beats by Dre Data Analytics
System design & cross-functional communicationSolutions Engineer roles: "LLM-based system design, customer-facing problem solving"Wayfair AI Agent Engineering

The Wayfair project is agent-engineering work that produces the build-and-explain evidence an agentic AI interview probes for, and the Beats project delivers the data-analysis artifact a behavioral round wants to hear about.

What Is the Adept AI Application and Interview Process Like?

Based on Glassdoor interview data and the company's research lab culture, Adept AI's hiring process ran roughly 90 days from application to decision:

1. Identify and apply for openings. Monitor adept.ai, LinkedIn, and Wellfound. All documented candidates applied online. No referral-only pathway was confirmed, though at a 30-person company, a warm introduction carries outsized weight.

2. Recruiter phone screen. Initial call to assess background, motivation, and logistics. Standard format for AI startups.

3. Technical phone screen (1 hour). Hard LeetCode-level problems with enough time to solve. This is the primary filter. Expect medium-to-hard difficulty on data structures, algorithms, and optimization.

4. Onsite interviews (4 rounds). Two coding rounds at medium-to-hard LeetCode level, one LLM-specific system design round, and one hiring manager conversation covering behavioral fit and research depth. The system design round tested LLM architectures specifically, not generic distributed systems.

5. Decision. Offer or rejection communicated. One candidate reported rejection within 12 hours of a take-home submission with no feedback. Another declined an offer after a positive experience. The process spans roughly 90 days total.

Two skills dominate: LeetCode fluency at hard difficulty for the coding rounds, and the ability to design and reason about LLM-based agent systems for the system design round. Adept's technical bar was rated "very difficult" on Glassdoor by both reviewers, comparable to top AI research labs. Note that some roles used a 6-hour take-home assignment instead of or in addition to the phone screen, so prepare for both formats.

What Students on Reddit Say

Direct Reddit discussion of Adept AI internships is minimal because the company was too small to generate a typical intern community. Most threads focus on the Amazon acqui-hire and its aftermath, all paraphrased.

After Amazon absorbed most of Adept's leadership team, technical community observers noted that the acqui-hire was primarily a talent play rather than a technology acquisition, with the remaining company significantly diminished in capability and headcount.

r/mlscaling acqui-hire reaction, paraphrased · read the thread

When the head of Amazon's AGI lab departed, former colleagues confirmed that Adept AI enforced a strict five-day in-office policy in San Francisco, and several key team members had already moved on to other companies within about a year of the deal.

r/amazonemployees talent retention, paraphrased · read the thread

In discussions about AI startup compensation, Adept AI's $400 million raise before generating meaningful revenue was cited as a benchmark for how generously the agentic AI space was being funded during the 2022 to 2024 period.

r/Salary compensation context, paraphrased · read the thread

How Do You Prepare When the Company Is Not Actively Hiring?

Three moves, all redirecting the same ambition. First, build the exact portfolio Adept tested: one end-to-end agentic AI project where a model navigates software, completes a multi-step workflow, and you can explain every design decision under interview pressure. The skill transfers directly to Amazon AGI, Meta FAIR, and Databricks Mosaic, where most of Adept's former team now works. Second, drill LeetCode at hard difficulty with a focus on data structures, algorithms, and optimization follow-ups, because that was the consistent filter in Glassdoor reports. Third, set monitoring alerts on adept.ai, LinkedIn, and Wellfound in case the remaining 30-person team posts a role. At that scale, a single warm introduction from someone in the San Francisco AI community carries more weight than any application portal. And keep the broader frame: the agentic AI space Adept pioneered is now one of the fastest-growing segments in the industry, so every hour of preparation here is preparation for a dozen other companies.

A young researcher sitting alone at a long communal table in a modern open-plan office with exposed brick and tall windo

What Other Companies Should You Consider?

If Adept AI's agentic AI focus drew your interest, these companies are actively hiring in overlapping domains and several employ former Adept team members:

  • AnthropicAI safety research lab building Claude, with a growing research internship program in the agentic AI spaceGuide →
  • OpenAIWhere Adept CEO David Luan was the roughly 30th hire and VP of Engineering. The agentic AI focus overlaps directlyGuide →
  • Google DeepMindResearch lab with deep Transformer expertise, the same foundation Adept's co-founders built onGuide →
  • DatabricksFormer Adept co-founder Erich Elsen joined as Principal Research Scientist. The Mosaic team works on foundation modelsGuide →
  • Scale AIData infrastructure for AI training, a complementary skill set to Adept's model-building focusGuide →

Our tech internships summer 2027 guide maps the whole landscape, timeline by timeline.

Two engineers in casual clothes standing at a wide whiteboard in a sunlit San Francisco loft office with indoor plants a

FAQ

Is Adept AI still hiring interns for Summer 2027?

As of July 2026, no. There are no open internship or full-time positions at Adept AI on any major job platform. The company was reduced from roughly 150 to about 30 employees following Amazon's acqui-hire of most leadership in June 2024. Monitor adept.ai for any future postings, but openings are unlikely.

What happened to Adept AI?

In June 2024, Amazon hired most of Adept's co-founders and leadership and licensed its core AI agent technology. The remaining company continues under new CEO Zach Brock with roughly 30 employees, focusing on agentic AI solutions. The FTC opened an inquiry into whether the deal was structured to avoid merger disclosure requirements.

How much would an Adept AI internship pay?

No verified intern pay data exists. Based on full-time engineer compensation ($200K to $530K+ total comp on Levels.fyi) and industry comparables for elite AI startups, intern pay is estimated at $9,000 to $12,000 per month. Glassdoor averages for ML interns across the industry sit at roughly $11,313 per month.

How hard is it to get an internship at Adept AI?

When positions existed, extremely competitive. Interview difficulty was rated very difficult on Glassdoor, with hard LeetCode coding rounds and LLM-specific system design questions. The estimated acceptance rate was below 5%. The founding team included two co-authors of the Transformer paper and alumni of OpenAI and Google Brain.

What is the interview process like at Adept AI?

Based on Glassdoor data, the process includes a recruiter call, a 1-hour technical phone screen at hard LeetCode level, then an onsite with two coding rounds, one LLM system design round, and one hiring manager round. The full process takes approximately 90 days. Some roles used a 6-hour take-home assignment instead.

Should I apply to Amazon AGI instead of Adept AI?

If you are interested in Adept's original AI agent technology, yes. Most of Adept's co-founders and core technology landed at Amazon's AGI team, where they built Nova Act, which reached the top of the REALBench agent leaderboard. Former co-founders have also joined Meta and Databricks.

Where is Adept AI located?

Adept AI is based in San Francisco at 350 Rhode Island Street, in the area known as Area AI. The company enforced a strict 5-day in-office policy. No remote internship options were documented.

Adept AI is not actively hiring, but the agentic AI space it pioneered is booming. Spend the runway building proof: a remote Externship turns interest in agentic AI into a finished project you can point at when the next agent-focused company opens applications.


About the Author

Bifei Wang has spent 17 years focused on human flow and the growth of young professionals, spanning international education, career training and coaching, and recruitment process outsourcing. Over 7 years at Extern, he has had one-on-one sessions with thousands of students exploring careers in consulting, finance, tech, marketing, and data, giving him a firsthand view of how the job market has shifted for early-career professionals and what it actually takes to break in.

New from Extern

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Ready to get started?

Learn how Externships can help you prosper
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.