Intern Prototype Build Engineer Jobs in Illinois

Your Journey at Crowe Starts Here:

At Crowe, you can build a meaningful and rewarding career. With real flexibility to balance work with life moments, you’re trusted to deliver results and make an impact. We embrace you for who you are, care for your well-being, and nurture your career. Everyone has equitable access to opportunities for career growth and leadership. Over our 80-year history, delivering excellent service through innovation has been a core part of our DNA across our audit, tax, and consulting groups. That’s why we continuously invest in innovative ideas, such as AI-enabled insights and technology-powered solutions, to enhance our services. Join us at Crowe and embark on a career where you can help shape the future of our industry.

Job Description:

AI Engineering Intern

Role Overview

The AI Engineering Intern (Intern) supports the design, development, testing, and deployment of artificial intelligence solutions across the organization. This hands-on role provides exposure to core AI engineering practices—including model development, data preparation, and prototype creation—while contributing to supervised project tasks. Working closely with senior engineers, the intern builds foundational skills in coding standards, version control, evaluation techniques, and cloud-native development workflows. The intern collaborates with cross-functional teams, applies academic concepts to enterprise-scale systems, and gains the experience needed to grow into an entry-level engineering role.

This role emphasizes learning and skill development while delivering on assigned components, working under close supervision with frequent check-ins and code reviews, and building foundational technical skills and understanding of engineering practices. Successful interns demonstrate curiosity, initiative, and responsiveness to feedback.

In this role, you will:

• Support the development of AI models and prototypes through data preparation, scripting, and experimentation
• Assist in implementing components of AI pipelines, including preprocessing, model training, and testing workflows
• Participate in code reviews and supervised engineering tasks to learn best practices
• Contribute to documentation of prototypes, experiments, and engineering processes
• Execute test cases and validation procedures to verify model performance and reliability
• Analyze datasets to extract insights and generate features under guidance
• Learn cloud-based tools, containerization, and orchestration concepts relevant to AI deployment
• Collaborate with team members to solve technical problems and complete scoped tasks
• Follow established coding, security, and compliance guidelines
• Explore emerging AI technologies and frameworks to build foundational understanding

Qualifications

• Pursuing a degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related field
• Working knowledge of foundational programming concepts and data structures, with exposure to Python
• Familiarity with core AI/ML concepts gained through coursework or independent projects
• Ability to communicate technical ideas clearly and collaborate effectively within a team
• Exposure to cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP, along with containerization concepts including Docker and Kubernetes
• Introductory understanding of CI/CD practices and distributed computing fundamentals
• Curiosity-driven approach to learning, with responsiveness to feedback and coaching
• Some grounding in generative AI frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or Hugging Face
• Beginning awareness of LLM concepts, including RAG workflows, vector databases, and fine-tuning techniques

Preferred Qualifications

• Academic or project-based experience applying AI/ML concepts
• Awareness of low-code automation platforms such as Microsoft Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate)
• Familiarity with developer-focused AI tools such as Replit Agent or similar agentic coding platforms

Minimum Knowledge Expectations

All candidates for Crowe Studio positions are expected to demonstrate baseline AI and technical knowledge, regardless of role or level.

Core Knowledge Areas

All Crowe Studio team members are expected to have working knowledge in the following areas:

• Basic ML/AI literacy (training vs inference, knowledge cutoffs, LLM fundamentals)
• Prompt engineering and instruction hierarchies
• Context window and context management
• Model selection and capabilities
• Fine-tuning vs prompting vs RAG
• Hallucination and grounding strategies
• Guardrails and output validation
• Evals and testing approaches
• Security and PII awareness
• Responsible AI and governance
• LLM APIs and integration standards
• RAG and vector search
• Vector databases and embeddings
• Agentic workflows and tool use
• Cost and performance awareness
• Common enterprise use cases

What We Look For

Beyond technical knowledge, we look for candidates who demonstrate:

• Intellectual curiosity – asking thoughtful questions and seeking deeper understanding
• Attention to detail – noticing subtle issues and inconsistencies
• Analytical thinking – breaking down complex problems and thinking critically
• Tenacity – following issues through to resolution, even when challenging
• Strong communication – conveying ideas clearly to technical and non-technical audiences

We expect the candidate to uphold Crowe’s values of Care, Trust, Courage, and Stewardship. These values define who we are. We expect all of our people to act ethically and with integrity at all times.

In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire. Crowe is not sponsoring for work authorization at this time.

The wage range for this role takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs. The disclosed range estimate has not been adjusted for the applicable geographic differential associated with the location at which the position may be filled. At Crowe, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their role and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is $27.00 - $42.00 per hour.

Our Benefits:

Your exceptional people experience starts here. At Crowe, we know that great people are what makes a great firm. We care about our people and offer employees a comprehensive total rewards package. Learn more about what working at Crowe can mean for you!

How You Can Grow:

We will nurture your talent in an inclusive culture that values diversity. You will have the chance to meet on a consistent basis with your Career Coach that will guide you in your career goals and aspirations. Learn more about where talent can prosper!

More about Crowe:

Crowe (www.crowe.com) is one of the largest public accounting, consulting and technology firms in the United States. Crowe uses its deep industry expertise to provide audit services to public and private entities while also helping clients reach their goals with tax, advisory, risk and performance services. Crowe is recognized by many organizations as one of the country’s best places to work. Crowe serves clients worldwide as an independent member of Crowe Global, one of the largest global accounting networks in the world. The network consists of more than 200 independent accounting and advisory services firms in more than 130 countries around the world.

Crowe LLP and Crowe Advisory LLC (and their respective subsidiary entities) provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetics, national origin, disability or protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Crowe LLP and Crowe Advisory LLC (and their respective subsidiary entities) does not accept unsolicited candidates, referrals or resumes from any staffing agency, recruiting service, sourcing entity or any other third-party paid service at any time. Any referrals, resumes or candidates submitted to Crowe, or any employee or owner of Crowe without a pre-existing agreement signed by both parties covering the submission will be considered the property of Crowe, and free of charge.

Crowe will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws.

Please visit our webpage to see notices of the various state and local Ban-the-Box laws and Fair Chance Ordinances, where applicable.

We are committed to a merit-based hiring process, evaluating all candidates consistently using objective, job-related criteria such as relevant experience, demonstrated skills, measurable impact, and alignment with the role’s responsibilities, and making employment decisions in a fair and inclusive manner free from discrimination.

If you are interested in applying for employment with Crowe and are in need of an accommodation or require special assistance to navigate our website or to complete your application, please visit our Applicant Assistance and Accommodations page for more information: https://careers.crowe.com/crowe-applicant-assistance-and-accommodation