Operations Research Intern (PhD), Summer 2027

About The Role

This is a 12-week Operations Research Internship hosted in person at the DoorDash office in Sunnyvale, CA. Interns will report into a manager on the Assignment Engine team, be completely immersed in their teams, and have the opportunity to develop, maintain, and ship products. You will directly impact the business by collaborating with your team to solve real problems for customers.

You Will

• Design and implement improvements to our real-time on-demand dispatching algorithm.
• Analyze data to understand each delivery at the lowest level of detail, perform cutting-edge research, and inspire new lines of work.
• Collaborate with engineers, data scientists, product managers, business operators, and more to develop cross-cutting and scalable solutions that guide value for consumers, dashers, and merchants.
• Receive actionable feedback from your mentor and team members.
• Socialize with and learn from colleagues all across the company through events.

We're Excited About You Because You Are

• A PhD student in operations research, industrial engineering, computer science, or a related field graduating between Fall 2027 and Summer 2028.
• Have research or industry experience working on complex optimization problems through mathematical programming or metaheuristics.
• Have strong programming fundamentals, experience in object-oriented and/or functional programming languages, and a solid understanding of algorithms.
• Have an excitement to analyze, iterate, and contribute to our state-of-the-art real-time dispatch system.
• Experience developing algorithms for logistics problems, especially VRP and real-time dispatching.
• Experience with mathematical programming software packages like Cplex, Gurobi, Coin-OR, or Xpress.
• Production experience with a JVM-based language (e.g., Java, Kotlin, Scala).
• Experience with software development lifecycle (writing clean code, version control, unit testing, etc.).
• Production experience with modern web applications at scale.
• Experience with statistical analysis and machine learning algorithms.
• Proficient in SQL and a visualization tool (e.g., Tableau, Chartio, Mode).

Note: Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S. F-1 students are eligible if using Curricular Practical Training (CPT). DoorDash does not support students on J-1 visas.