Website Whitney Museum of American Art
Summary
The Whitney seeks a Technology – Project Management Intern for the Fall 2026 semester.
Expected Projects & Assignments
The AI Product Engineering Intern will design, prototype, and ship AI-powered tools that augment how museum staff work across curatorial, collections, education, and operations functions. The role pairs hands-on engineering with LLMs and agentic systems with product thinking grounded in real user needs, supporting the Whitney’s digital transformation strategy.
The AI Product Engineering Intern will:
- Build prototypes and proofs-of-concept using LLM APIs (Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, open-weight models) to address workflow challenges surfaced through staff interviews
- Design and implement agentic workflows that combine reasoning, tool use, and integrations with existing museum systems
- Develop retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines over institutional knowledge sources such as collection records, archives, and internal documentation
- Write evaluation harnesses to measure prototype quality, accuracy, latency, and cost; iterate based on results
- Practice prompt engineering and structured-output design across diverse use cases
- Conduct user research with staff to validate prototypes and inform product direction
- Document current workflows and identify the highest-leverage opportunities for AI augmentation
- Contribute to internal guidelines around responsible AI use, privacy, and data handling
- Help shepherd successful pilots toward broader rollout with appropriate documentation and support
Key Details
Compensation: $3,000 stipend
Term: Fall 2026 (September 15 – December 5, 2026)
Schedule: PT (16–21 hours/week)
Format: The internship is hybrid, with some onsite work.
Deadline: 08/14/2026 (*all applicants will be considered on a rolling basis)
Eligibility
Skills & Qualifications
- Coursework in computer science, information systems, data science, machine learning, HCI, or a related technical field
- Hands-on experience building with LLM APIs (Claude, GPT, Gemini, or similar); comfort with prompt engineering and structured outputs
- Working knowledge of Python or TypeScript, version control with Git and GitHub, and modern AI coding tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, or Cline
- Familiarity with at least one of: agentic frameworks, RAG systems, vector databases, or model evaluation methodologies
- Comfort reading API documentation and integrating across services (REST, webhooks, OAuth)
- Strong product instincts; ability to scope a problem, ship a rough prototype, and iterate based on user feedback
- Excellent communication skills and ability to translate technical possibilities for non-technical collaborators
- Curiosity about the frontier of AI capability paired with thoughtful awareness of its limits and risks
- Ability to work independently while collaborating across curatorial, education, collections, and operations teams
- Interest in modern and contemporary art and museum practice preferred
- Prior projects (open source, coursework, hackathons, personal builds) that demonstrate shipped AI work are a strong plus
About
The Whitney Museum of American Art, founded in 1930 by the artist and philanthropist Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, houses the foremost collection of American art from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From her vision arose the Whitney Museum of American Art, which has been championing the most innovative art of the United States for 86 years. The core of the Whitney’s mission is to collect, preserve, interpret, and exhibit American art of our time and serve a wide variety of audiences in celebration of the complexity and diversity of art and culture in the United States.
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To apply for this job please visit jobs.whitney.org.