Generative AI Prompt Engineering & QA - Summer 2025 Internship
Are you a creative, highly organized, and energetic problem solver looking to gain hands-on experience and add an impressive win to your resume? Would you like to contribute to cutting-edge AI development, shape the future of robotics, and learn from senior managers with decades of experience from top-tier tech and consulting companies?
Join us at Onki, a robotics startup dedicated to creating the most human-centric robots, designed to understand, react to, and support the complex spectrum of human needs and emotions in public spaces.
You will work closely with the founding team, which consists of former senior managers from top-tier strategy consulting firms, leading tech/e-commerce companies, and unicorn startups, in our prompt engineering and QA sprint. You’ll design and optimize real customer conversations, systematically test new features, and directly influence how our products interact with shoppers.
Internship Objectives:
- Skill Development: Learn and practice general workplace skills; gain insights into strategic problem-solving, data-driven decision-making, and the mindset of large tech & startup businesses.
- Design and optimize conversational prompts and dialogue flows for real retail scenarios
- Own Quality Assurance for interactions—rigorously test, document, and troubleshoot AI behavior
- Analyze real customer interactions to inform improvements and shape product direction
What You’ll Gain
- Hands-on experience with real AI product development and deployment in retail environments
- Direct mentorship from founders
- Opportunity to influence the future of in-store customer engagement and AI-driven retail
- Exposure to advanced AI, reinforcement learning, and conversational design challenges
In addition to this internship position, Onki is also recruiting for additional internship roles in Human/Machine Interaction, Computational linguistics, Cognitive/Behavioral Science, Mechanical Design, Electrical Engineering, Financial, Venture Capital and Fundraising, Marketing & Market Research, Customer Experience and User Research, User Experience, OR/Decision Science, Data Science. Please see details and application on our website.
Note: the robotic carrier video on our website homepage is an earlier product we explored in 2023. With a combination of highly sophisticated software and hardware, we are now focused on developing a groundbreaking AI platform for interactions in public spaces. We'll share more details during the interview process.
Candidate Profile:
You should be a talented self-starter, an open-minded risk-taker, a quick learner who’s passionate about both language and technology, have an appreciation for good aesthetics, a strong desire to produce high-quality work, and be highly motivated to gain hands-on experience in a cutting-edge field.
- Current graduate student or advanced undergraduate in linguistics, cognitive science, HCI, computer science, psychology, or a related field
- Strong interest in conversational AI, language models, or digital assistants
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills with obsessive attention to detail
- Analytical and systematic approach to problem-solving
- Previous experience in retail, sales, hospitality, or direct customer service is a strong plus—especially if you’ve interacted with customers, made product recommendations, or managed point-of-sale conversations
- Experience with prompt engineering, AI/LLMs, chatbots, or dialogue systems is a plus
- Experience with software QA, UX research, or data annotation is a plus
Program Details
- From June 23 to Aug 29, with 30 hours minimum commitment (up to full time) weekly.
- Flexible Schedule: The dates above can be adjusted to accommodate your school or personal schedule, with a minimum total commitment of 10 weeks.
- Locations: NYC or Remote.
The internship will prepare you for a greater role in our small and rapidly growing company. Alternatively, if your career objective is to pursue a career in top-tier consulting, big tech, or startups, this internship experience will make you a highly competitive candidate. If you excel during the internship, we’ll gladly leverage our professional network to provide strong recommendations to future employers.
Selection Process:
- Resume/application review
- Complete a 2 - 4 hour long homework assignment (will be emailed to candidates who passed resume screening)
- 2 rounds of 40-50 minute interviews
Our rigorous selection process ensures a high-quality experience. Current and past interns include students from Stanford, Columbia, UPenn, Duke, UC Berkeley NYU, University of Michigan, and more. Understanding Amazon leadership principles may help with your interviews: Amazon Leadership Principles.
Application Instructions:
As part of your application, please attach an one page Word document with responses to the following questions (maximum 300 words total):
- Describe your long-term career objective.
- What do you expect to gain from this internship?
- What’s your most relevant previous experience?
- Our performance standard is very high. We expect interns to deliver at the same caliber as new grads joining top tech firms or elite startups. You’ll regularly tackle complex, ambiguous problems during this internship. Do you fully grasp these requirements? Provide a specific example of how you navigated a highly challenging situation at work or school, highlighting your process and results.
- What makes you stand out from the hundred+ applicants we are expecting? why should we work with you?
- What's your SAT/ACT/GRE score? And what's your overall undergrad GPA?
- Your preferred start date, duration, and weekly hour commitment.
- Please state that you understand the internship is unpaid.
The Word file should be named as firstname_lastname_application.doc. Applications without response to the above questions will be automatically rejected. Please do not submit anything other than your resume and the Word response file requested. We welcome applications from all juniors/seniors, graduate students and recent alums (including international students). This internship can be eligible for school credit / CPT. We encourage early submission as applications will be considered on a rolling basis.