Agent Engineering Intern

Los Altos, CA · Engineering · Internship · Semester/quarter or summer · Fully in-person

COMPANY OVERVIEW

Cheiron is building an AI-native operating system for drug development: a connected view of the evidence, assumptions, risks, decisions and commitments behind a drug program. The goal is to help biopharma teams understand what is known, test their assumptions and see how a change affects the rest of a program.

Our current focus is CMC (Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls): how a drug is made, tested and kept consistent throughout its commercial life. A manufacturing change can create a chain of evidence, review and submission work across markets. Today, teams piece this work together across documents, spreadsheets and institutional memory. We're building agents that connect the relevant evidence, reason through requirements and help teams prepare and review the resulting submissions.

Founded in 2024 by Stanford-trained AI researchers, Cheiron is a Seed-stage company headquartered in Los Altos, California. Our team of 19 people, including 8 engineers, combines AI and software engineering with experience from pharma and biotech. The platform has been adopted by tens of thousands of biopharma professionals. With $16M total raised, including an $11M seed round led by Menlo Ventures, we're growing our engineering team in Los Altos and Seoul.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We're looking for an Agent Engineering Intern to build reliable agent workflows for complex regulatory work.

You'll own a bounded part of the product with support from engineers and domain experts: understand the problem, implement the workflow and backend logic, test its behavior and improve it through feedback. The work includes retrieving evidence, calling tools, managing state and producing results a regulatory professional can inspect.

We value strong software fundamentals, fast learning and deep reasoning. You should be able to explain what you built, investigate why it behaves as it does, recognize what you don't yet know and carry your reasoning through to working software.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Build a bounded agent workflow from an ambiguous problem to working, tested software, with feedback from engineers and domain experts.

- Implement backend services, APIs and data models that support tool use, explicit workflow state and structured outputs.

- Connect workflows to retrieval and source evidence, making important outputs traceable and reviewable.

- Write meaningful tests and evaluations, investigate failures and improve error handling, retries and recovery.

- Use AI-assisted development actively, inspect generated code and verify behavior through tests and debugging.

- Explain technical trade-offs, identify consequential unknowns and iterate through code reviews, experiments and user feedback.

REQUIREMENTS

- Currently pursuing an undergraduate or master's degree in computer science, computer engineering, or a related technical field.

- Strong software fundamentals: programming, data structures, state, API and data modeling, debugging, error handling and meaningful tests.

- Evidence of building: a substantial software project, developer tool, backend service, open-source contribution or internship implementation you personally built. You can explain the core logic, your contribution, technical decisions and how you checked the result.

- Fast learning: understand unfamiliar concepts and code, build a useful mental model and apply what you learn to working software.

- Deep reasoning and judgment: form and test explanations, predict edge cases, distinguish facts from assumptions, account for unknowns and revise your approach when evidence changes.

- Ownership and collaboration: make progress with incomplete specifications, ask useful questions, respond to feedback and follow through to a usable result.

- AI-workflow adaptability: learn and use AI coding tools quickly, critically review their output and remain accountable for the design and behavior.

- Ability to work fully in person in Los Altos. Semester or quarter interns must commit at least 20 hours per week; summer interns should be available full time.

NICE TO HAVE

- Experience building agents, tool-using workflows, retrieval systems, evaluations or workflow automation.

- Familiarity with Python, FastAPI, Postgres or related backend technologies.

- Backend, systems, developer-tool or end-to-end product work with real users or meaningful operational constraints.

- Work involving citations, provenance, versioned records or human review.

- Meaningful open-source contributions or previous software-engineering internships.

- Experience with regulated software or life-sciences workflows.

COMPENSATION

$35–$55 per hour. Exact compensation within the range depends on demonstrated expertise, relevant experience, and the time the student can commit.

LOCATION, RELOCATION & VISA

This role is fully in person in Los Altos, CA. Academic-term interns must be able to work from the office at least 20 hours per week; summer interns should expect a full-time commitment. Relocation assistance may be offered selectively to a strong candidate and is not guaranteed. Candidates of any nationality or visa status may be considered when the internship can be employed legally.

INTERVIEW PROCESS

Semester/quarter route:

- 30-minute introductory call → one-day onsite in Los Altos → decision.

Summer route:

- 15-minute introductory call → take-home assignment → take-home interview → interview with Backend Team → decision.

- For some summer candidates, the final two interviews may instead be combined into a one-day onsite in Los Altos.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY & ACCOMMODATION

Cheiron is an equal-opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.