About the role#
The Strategy & Knowledge team is working to improve how IDB Invest manages its knowledge assets. This internship focuses on the semantic and structural side of that goal. You will help build a foundation for future AI-enabled services by working with taxonomies, controlled vocabularies, and ontologies. Your specific tasks will be defined during your first week to ensure they align with the current stage of the program.
What you'll do#
- Map current metadata, tagging, and categorization practices across existing platforms.
- Design and refine a controlled vocabulary and taxonomy covering sectors, regions, and document types.
- Draft a lightweight ontology of entities and their relationships to support future knowledge graph applications.
- Pilot-test the taxonomy on a sample of content to measure tagging consistency and retrieval accuracy.
- Document metadata standards and tagging guidelines, then present your recommendations to the team.
What you'll need#
- You must be an active graduate student in Library or Information Science, Knowledge Management, Computational Linguistics, Data or Information Architecture, Computer Science, or a related field.
- You should have technical experience with taxonomy design, controlled vocabularies, and metadata frameworks like SKOS, Dublin Core, OWL, or RDF.
- We look for comfort with ambiguity and the ability to handle unstructured content.
- Fluency in English is required. Working knowledge of Spanish, French, or Portuguese is a plus.
- You must have completed at least 50% of your graduate coursework at the time of application.
Location & details#
- This is an on-site, full-time internship based in Washington, D.C.
- The term runs from January 16, 2027, to March 15, 2027.
- This is a paid position.
- You must be a first-time participant in an IDB Group internship program and have no family members currently working at the IDB or IDB Invest.
- International students must ensure they have valid work authorization (CPT or OPT) for 40 hours per week.
About Inter-American Development Bank
The Inter-American Development Bank provides long-term financing for economic, social, and institutional development. Founded in 1959, the organization supports 48 member countries across Latin America and the Caribbean. It offers research, policy advice, and technical assistance to help plan and execute development projects. The bank maintains a staff of over 8,000 people and is based in Washington, DC.
How to get in at Inter-American Development Bank
Securing an internship at the Inter-American Development Bank requires timing your application to land in the first wave of candidates. Intern Insider sends an instant alert the moment a role matching your target is published, which helps you apply before the applicant pool grows too large. Early applicants often receive more attention from hiring teams. You can use Intern Insider to identify the specific recruiters behind the bank's roles and reach out directly to ask about the position or a referral. Connecting with a recruiter can materially improve your response rates compared to submitting a cold application through a portal.
