Machine Learning Intern (PhD) - Summer 2026

Patreon is a media and community platform where over 300,000 creators give their biggest fans access to exclusive work and experiences. We offer creators a variety of ways to engage with their fans and build a lasting business including: paid memberships, free memberships, community chats, live video, and selling to fans directly with one-time purchases.

Ultimately our goal is simple: fund the creative class. And we're leaders in that space, with:

• $10 billion+ in revenue generated since Patreon's inception

• 100 million+ free memberships for fans who may not be ready to pay just yet, and

• 25 million+ paid memberships on Patreon today.

We're continuing to invest heavily in building the best creator platform with the best team in the creator economy and are looking for a Machine Learning Intern to support our mission.

This role is based in San Francisco or New York and open to those who are able to be in-office 3 days per week on a hybrid work model.

About the Role

As a Machine Learning Intern, you’ll join one of our ML teams and work closely with experienced machine learning engineers, product managers, designers, and engineers. You’ll gain hands-on experience across the end-to-end ML development lifecycle — from exploratory data analysis and model prototyping to production deployment and monitoring. With mentorship and cross-functional collaboration, you’ll own a well-defined ML project expected to ship to production by the end of the internship, making meaningful contributions to systems that support creators and fans worldwide.

In this role, you will:

• Ship a real-world ML feature that directly impacts the creator economy! You’ll work on a well-defined machine learning project in close partnership with a dedicated mentor, with the goal of shipping a complete, production-ready solution by the end of the internship. This includes training and iterating on ML models, writing high-quality, production-level code, and building backend components to integrate your model into Patreon's existing systems.

• Be part of a great team. You’ll be embedded into a world-class engineering team, working alongside fellow engineers, product managers, designers, and data scientists to make your feature a success.

• Learn a lot. In the spirit of Win Together, we’ll pair you with one of our experienced engineers to mentor and guide you as you ramp up and work through all the technical challenges of your internship project.

• You’ll have fun. Besides shipping a great product and partaking in Patreon's Intern Summit, you’ll experience San Francisco or New York City during your summer internship alongside your intern cohort!

About You

• You are currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science or a related technical degree (e.g. Math, Physics, Bioinformatics)

• You possess solid technical knowledge of CS fundamentals, data structures and machine learning

• You have experience using Python for large scale data processing and you are strongly proficient using PySpark

• You demonstrate a willingness to learn and incorporate feedback

• You are passionate about consumer products and the creator economy

About Patreon

Patreon powers creators to do what they love and get paid by the people who love what they do. Our team is passionate about making this mission and our core values come to life every day in our work. Through this work, our Patronauts:

• Put Creators First | They’re the reason we’re here. When creators win, we win.

• Build with Craft | We sign our name to every deliverable, just like the creators we serve.

• Make it Happen | We don’t quit. We learn and deliver.

• Win Together | We grow as individuals. We win as a team.

We hire talented and passionate people from different backgrounds because workplace diversity and inclusion is critical to our ability to serve creators worldwide. If you’re excited about a role but your past experience doesn’t match with every bullet point outlined above, we strongly encourage you to apply anyway. If you’re a creator at heart, are energized by our mission, and share our company values, we’d love to hear from you.

Patreon is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We provide employment opportunities without regard to age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any other protected class. If you need a reasonable accommodation during the interview process, please let us know via email at accomodations@patreon.

Patreon operates under a hybrid work model, where interns based in office locations are expected to come into the office three days per week, excluding sick time and leave. The goal of this policy is to be intentional about the in-person time we spend together to strengthen the feeling of community at Patreon.