Summer Internship – Design Verification & AI

📍 Cambridge, UK
📅 Duration: 8–12 weeks (Summer 2026)
💼 Paid Internship £25k (undergrad) up to £35k (postgrad)

lowRISC CIC

About Us

Imagine the innovations we could achieve together if production-ready commercial-grade IP components and engineering systems were available to everyone, for free.  At lowRISC we believe that open source development can transform the semiconductor industry.

Our Ibex CPU and OpenTitan Root of Trust projects have been taken to production silicon, partnering with world-leading organisations including Google, combining open-source approaches with best practice chip design methodologies. 

lowRISC is a non-profit Community Interest Company: with a business model that includes member fees and engineering services we have shown that it is possible to run world- leading projects collaboratively for everyone’s benefit. Originally a spinout  from Cambridge  University’s Computer Lab, our UK team is based in Cambridge and our Switzerland team is based in Zurich.

The Role

We are looking for a Summer Intern with an interest in design verification and AI to support our engineering teams. This internship offers hands-on exposure to hardware verification, AI-assisted testing, and open-source projects that impact the global tech ecosystem.

You may work on:

• Design verification workflows using SystemVerilog, UVM, or equivalent
• AI/ML tools to assist verification, testing, or bug detection
• Developing testbenches and automated verification scripts
• Analyzing verification results to improve hardware reliability
• Contributing to open-source repositories and documentation

About You

We are looking for students who:

• Are studying Computer Science, Electronic Engineering, AI, or related fields 2nd+ year Bachelor's or part way through a Master's or PHD
• Have experience or interest in hardware design, verification, or AI/ML
• Are comfortable with Python, C/C++, or scripting for verification
• Have basic understanding of hardware description languages (Verilog/SystemVerilog)
• Are curious, proactive, and enjoy collaborative problem solving

Bonus skills (not required):

• Familiarity with RISC-V architectures
• Knowledge of UVM / SystemVerilog testbenches
• Experience with AI-assisted verification tools or ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow)

What We Offer

• Competitive salary £25k (undergrad) up to £35k for a postgrad
• Mentorship from engineers leading open-source hardware projects
• Hands-on experience in hardware verification enhanced by AI
• Flexible hybrid working environment
• Opportunity to contribute to globally used open-source projects
• Collaborative project based culture

How to Apply

Submit:

Via our website:

• Your CV
• A short cover letter explaining your interests and experience
• Optional: Links to GitHub or AI/hardware projects