Forward-Deployed AI Engineer - Internship

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This is a 6-month paid internship in our AI Lab in Milan.

It is designed to lead to a permanent, full-time role as a Forward-Deployed AI Engineer, so we only offer it to people who can join us full-time as soon as it ends.

We hire interns to keep them. If an intern doesn't stay with us, we consider it a failure on our side too, not just theirs. That's why the selection you will go through is so demanding: by the time you reach this step, we already believe you can make it.

It's for you if you:

• are in the final year of a Bachelor's degree, or
• are in the final year of a Master's degree, or
• completed a Bachelor's degree in the last 12 months, or
• completed a Master's degree in the last 12 months.

It's not for you if you:

• are in an earlier year of your degree, or
• plan to continue your studies after the internship

About Us

We are a boutique AI firm, founded in 2020, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, with an AI Lab in Milan, Italy. Not a consultancy. Not a software house. An AI firm, boutique by design, with one focus: financial services.

We co-create AI agents with our clients and run them in production, inside regulated financial institutions. Today more than 50 of our AI agents are live, and our team has filed 42 AI patents.

We believe in responsible, pragmatic AI: systems that are governed by design, integrate into real workflows, provide measurable value, and remain under the client's control.

Our Team

· Forward-Deployed Engineers: 18 people, including 4 Ph.D.s

· Leadership: 3 people

We are a lean, technical-first team, and we're growing.

We plan to add 10 new Forward-Deployed AI Engineers in the next 6 months.

The Role

A forward-deployed engineer works directly with the client and owns the solution end to end: from understanding the business problem, to choosing and building the right model, to shipping and running it in production. There's no handoff chain. The same engineer who hears the problem delivers the answer.

In practice, the role combines three disciplines:

· Business Analysis: understanding how a financial institution works, mapping its processes, and turning a vague request into a clear specification.

· AI Engineering: building, evaluating and improving models, from classic prediction models to fine-tuned LLMs, and AI Ops.

· Software Engineering: building the APIs, integrations and applications that put models into real workflows, then deploying and maintaining them.

Nobody arrives strong in all three. We hire people who are solid in at least one and eager to grow into the others.

Who You Are

• You enjoy understanding why something needs to be built, and you take ownership of outcomes the client can measure, not just tasks
• You're comfortable working directly with clients and resolving unclear problems with them, rather than waiting for a perfect spec
• You're curious across business, AI and software, especially about how financial services companies operate and make money
• You write clearly and communicate confidently in English, both written and spoken: we work in English with international clients and colleagues. Italian is a plus, not a requirement
• Prior work experience is not required: we welcome students and graduates from bachelor's and master's programmes. What matters most is how fast you learn

What You'll Do

You'll be embedded with enterprise clients in regulated financial services, one of the most data-rich industries in the world, and own AI solutions from the business problem to production.

Depending on the project, you might:

• Sit with client stakeholders to understand a workflow, identify where AI creates measurable value and redesign the process around it
• Build prediction models, ML-based document analysis and retrieval (RAG) pipelines that power conversational interfaces over the client's data
• Evaluate, benchmark and orchestrate open-weight models and agents
• Build the full-stack applications, APIs and integrations that connect your models to users and to the client's systems
• Deploy, monitor and improve what you've built once it's live

You'll join an operating team of FD AI Engineers and AI Leads, with a dedicated mentor at your side. There are no handoffs to other teams: you own the outcome. AI is how we work: you specify the feature and its tests, coding agents like Claude Code write much of the code, and you review the results. That's how you deliver far more than you could on your own. This is not a support role: you'll be expected to contribute from day one.

What You Will Learn

• Turning a vague client request into a clear spec, then into a working version;
• Building, evaluating and orchestrating ML and LLM-based systems: retrieval, evals and agents;
• Building full-stack applications and APIs that serve models to real users, and running them in production on Azure and Snowflake;

· Working with coding agents as a craft: specifying, testing and reviewing AI-generated code, and improving your workflow as the tools evolve;

• Communicating technical work clearly to non-technical stakeholders;
• How a business operates and makes money, and what it takes to build AI in a regulated industry, starting with financial services.

Tech Stack

We use a mix of modern tools and languages. You'll have the chance to explore and work with technologies like these:

• Languages: Python, SQL
• ML frameworks: PyTorch, XGBoost
• API frameworks: FastAPI
• Databases: Snowflake, Postgres
• Cloud: Azure, AWS
• AI-assisted development: Claude Code, MCP

Remote Work and Schedule

• 3 days in our Milan office (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) and 2 days remote (Monday, Friday)
• Working hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30–17:30 (Italian time)
• Lunch break: 12:30–13:30

Stipend and Benefits

• Monthly stipend (gross):
• €600 if you don't hold a degree yet
• €800 if you hold a Bachelor's degree
• €1,000 if you hold a Master's degree
• Personal mentorship from a Gemmo AI Project Leader
• Meal vouchers: €10 for each day in the office (around €120/month)
• Public transport pass reimbursement: reimbursement of the cost of local, regional or interregional public transport passes, up to €200 per month, upon submission of proof of purchase (single tickets and carnets are not eligible);

· AI tools: high usage limits on frontier models and coding agents, with new releases available from day one;

• A brand-new 14-inch MacBook Pro (M5) for your work with us.

Career Path

This internship is not a dead end. It's the front door.

At the end of the internship, if you meet our criteria, we offer you a permanent position as a Forward-Deployed AI Engineer.

The position starts as a 30-month Apprenticeship (so called Apprendistato Professionalizzante) under the CCNL Metalmeccanico, at level C3, with a starting gross annual salary (RAL) of €28,000, reviewed every year.

Under Italian law, an Apprenticeship is a permanent employment contract from day one, combined with a structured training plan.

When the 30 months end, it automatically continues as a standard permanent contract (so called Contratto a Tempo Indeterminato).

Selection Process

We keep it fast, respectful and transparent.

1. First Interview with the CEO (15 min): your motivation, background and availability.
2. Technical interview with a Senior Forward-Deployed Engineer (30 min): a thorough assessment of your technical skills.
3. Meet Gemmo with our Head of Engineering (30 min): once we've got to know you and want you on the team, we tell you about Gemmo and what it can mean for your career. If you reach this step, you're on our shortlist.
4. Offer: selected candidates receive an offer, which stays open for 24 hours. We're telling you now so there are no surprises.