About the role#
The Engineer I, VLA Planning and Control Deployment intern will improve the planning and control algorithms used in the CARIAD autonomous-driving deployment stack. You will work alongside planning and deployment engineers to apply operations research and classical control methods. The goal is to make trajectories more feasible, smooth, and computationally reliable. This role focuses on constrained optimization, trajectory refinement, controller performance, and integrating learned model outputs with vehicle behavior.
What you'll do#
- Prototype, train, and fine-tune VLA models or supporting perception and world-model components.
- Investigate recent methods and implement a focused research project under mentor guidance.
- Prepare driving datasets and evaluation splits while improving data quality.
- Run controlled experiments and ablations, maintaining reproducible configurations and records.
- Measure model accuracy, driving behavior, robustness, and inference cost.
- Analyze failures in offline and simulation evaluation.
- Collaborate with planning and deployment engineers on model interfaces.
- Document your methods, results, and limitations.
- Review code, present your findings, and deliver a final technical report and reproducible prototype.
What you'll need#
- Pursuing a degree in Operations Research, Control Engineering, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or a related field.
- Master's or PhD study with an emphasis on operations research, optimization, control theory, or vehicle dynamics is preferred.
- Foundations in numerical optimization, linear algebra, and dynamical systems.
- Hands-on experience with QP or classical control methods such as MPC, LQR, or PID.
- Ability to implement and debug algorithms in Python or C++.
- Ability to assess trajectory feasibility, tracking error, constraint violations, and runtime.
- Experience with QP formulation using OSQP, qpOASES, or HPIPM is a plus.
- Familiarity with vehicle dynamics, lateral/longitudinal control, and trajectory optimization.
- Experience with profiling, sparse numerical methods, solver warm starts, or embedded deployment.
- Experience with simulation, log replay, software-in-the-loop, or hardware-in-the-loop validation.
Location & details#
- This is an on-site role based in Mountain View, California.
- You must be local to the area; relocation is not provided.
- The hourly pay range for this position is $44.88 to $69.00.
- This is a full-time, paid internship position.
About CARIAD, Inc.
CARIAD, Inc. operates as the United States engineering hub for the Volkswagen Group. Based in Mountain View, California, the company focuses on software development for vehicles such as the Volkswagen ID. series, Audi e-tron, and Porsche Macan. It was founded in 2018 and employs between 201 and 500 people. The organization builds systems for infotainment, automated driving, connectivity, and vehicle hardware.
How to get in at CARIAD, Inc.
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