Interns are usually known to take up roles for little pay in the hope of gaining experience and getting a foot in the door of their chosen industry.
But one internship has hit the headlines this week due to offering an eyebrow-raising salary of around £78,000 for about three months’ work - and it’s made available by a British businessman.
The position on offer is an AI researcher for XTY Labs, who aim to develop algorithms for use in trading across the financial sector. But to land a spot earning $35,000 (£26,000) a month, as you might expect, you’ll need a very specific range of abilities.
For starters, you’ll need to be in the middle of obtaining a PhD in computer science, electrical engineering, mathematics or similar.
You also need to be based in New York four days a week and have a background in conducting your own research, have in-depth knowledge of machine learning and the latest artificial intelligence developments.
The placement is expected to last between 12 and 14 weeks and future full-time roles are a possibility, the company says in the job advert.
“The base salary for the AI Research Internship role will be $35,000 per month. You will enjoy similar benefits to those of our US permanent employees as appropriate and receive a generous sign-on bonus to be used for covering accommodation costs,” it continues.
Aside from the list of requirements for prospective candidates, the process to land the spot is also a bit more involved than the basic fire-off-an-email-to-HR approach.
An initial interview discussion takes place, before a take-home exercise to construct and develop an AI model and then a final one-hour interview with a researcher at the company.
Get all that right and a three-month stint earning around double the UK’s average annual salary is yours.
XTY Labs is a division within XTX Markets, a trading firm run by Alex Gerko - a Russian-born British billionaire who ranks as the 215th richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg.
Mr Gerko’s personal net worth is around $13.4bn (£10bn). He is now a British citizen, having renounced his Russian citizenship in 2022.
He is known for funding maths programmes among other charitable endeavours and was the biggest individual taxpayer in the country in 2024. He has announced plans to open the UK’s first specialist secondary school for talented young mathematicians.
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