About the role#
Skydio builds autonomous drones for inspection, public safety, and defense. In this role, your research will move from simulation to flight. You will develop and deploy reinforcement learning methods to help our aircraft navigate and control themselves in complex environments. Your work will directly shape how operators complete missions.
What you'll do#
- Train policies that adapt online to cluttered 3D scenes like forests or urban canyons.
- Fuse learned cost shaping and value functions with trajectory optimization for agile flight.
- Build scalable datasets and training loops using Isaac Lab, domain randomization, residual learning, and safety filters.
- Validate your work on real drones on a weekly basis.
- Learn assistive policies that blend pilot intent with autonomy priors and uncertainty-aware behaviors.
- Explore decentralized coordination for coverage, pursuit, and collaborative mapping with minimal communication.
What you'll need#
- Current enrollment as a PhD student in Robotics, Machine Learning, Controls, or a related field.
- Strong fundamentals in reinforcement learning, control theory, and motion planning.
- Comfort with safety and robustness concepts.
- Proficiency in Python using PyTorch, JAX, or Ray RLlib.
- Proficiency in C++ or CUDA.
- Hands-on experience with robotics simulation tools such as Isaac Lab, MuJoCo, or PyBullet.
- Experience with sim2real techniques.
- Experience training or deploying policies for navigation, manipulation, or locomotion on real robots or autonomous vehicles.
Location & details#
- This role is located in San Mateo, California.
- The position is on-site and full-time.
- This is a Summer 2027 internship.
About Skydio
Skydio designs and manufactures autonomous drones for public safety, defense, and utility inspection. The company focuses on artificial intelligence to simplify flight operations for complex environments. Founded in 2014, the firm maintains its headquarters in San Mateo and manufacturing facilities in Hayward, California. It currently employs over 1,000 people and has shipped more than 60,000 units.
How to get in at Skydio
Securing an internship at Skydio requires speed because high-growth robotics firms often fill roles quickly. Intern Insider sends an instant alert the moment a role matching your target is published anywhere, so you apply among the first, as early applicants get seen before the pile grows. It is a simple way to stay ahead of the competition during a busy recruiting season. Beyond speed, you should look for ways to distinguish your application from the standard queue. Intern Insider surfaces the recruiters behind the company's roles so you can reach out directly to ask about the role or a referral, which materially improves response rates. Connecting with a human recruiter shows you have done your homework on the company mission.
