Tableau Research Fall 2021 / Winter 2022 PhD Research Interns
Matt Brehmer
Tableau is on a mission to help people see and understand data. Tableau Research is a small team that uses academic and industry research methodologies to foster innovation. Research topics include visual analytics, data visualization, data preparation, human computer interaction, statistics, machine learning, natural language processing, search, as well as presentation and collaboration with data.
A research internship typically consists of a project that is mutually discussed and agreed upon between the intern and their mentor. The goal of the project is to help further the intern’s research career and inspire Tableau & Salesforce with new ideas for future product roadmaps. A research internship also provides excellent opportunities for exploring industry research, gain insights into product development, and publishing work at top academic conferences.
We are currently accepting internship applications for this Fall, between September and December 2021; the start and end dates are flexible based on academic schedules. A typical internship involves three months of full-time work.
What you’ll be doing…
As a research intern you will work closely with a mentor who is a member of Tableau Research. You will typically meet daily with your mentor to coordinate, plan, and help set expectations. You will be asked to present and provide updates a few times at our team meetings. Research typically involves designing and/or prototyping, along with possible user studies. You will be expected to create a final presentation and writeup of the project. Often, the project evolves into co-authoring an academic paper that could extend beyond the internship period.
Who you are…
Passionate about research. You are a PhD student in good academic standing with at least a couple years of research and publishing experience at high-quality conference and journal venues. In the past, interns have published at venues such as VIS, EuroVis, TVCG, CHI, CSCW, UIST, IUI, DIS, KDD, SIGMOD for example. Having previous internship experience is a plus, but not a requirement.
Aligned with our mission. Your research passion aligns with Tableau’s mission to help people see and understand data.
An effective communicator. You have clear written and oral communication skills.
Highly technical. If your project involves prototyping, you have strong technical skills to prototype in a language of your choice, e.g., D3/JavaScript, Python, R, C++, C#, Java, Go. If your project is study-focused, you have strong experience with setting up user studies, collecting, analyzing, and distilling qualitative and quantitative data. If your project is oriented towards statistics, you have strong computational skills and experience in statistical modeling, including data wrangling, model validation, and uncertainty assessment.
A proficient designer. If your project involves prototyping user interfaces, you have a portfolio of UX / interaction / visualization design examples.