About the role#
This internship focuses on the intersection of Vision-Language Models (VLMs) and autonomous vehicle planning. You will join the AI Foundations team to research and develop harnesses that allow VLMs to influence vehicle control. This is a full-time, paid, hybrid position for Summer 2027 based in Mountain View, California.
What you'll do#
- Design and implement scenario preprocessors, including visual rendering, scene representations, and multimodal prompting, to present driving scenarios to VLMs.
- Develop postprocessors that convert VLM outputs into safe, feasible trajectories for closed-loop vehicle control.
- Evaluate VLM driving harnesses within autonomous driving simulation environments and refine representations using driving metrics.
- Share research motivations and findings with both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Conduct research with the possibility of contributing to technical reports or academic publications.
What you'll need#
- Current enrollment in a PhD program in computer science, statistics, applied mathematics, physics, or a related field.
- At least 3 years of experience with Deep Learning, Computer Vision, and Generative Models like VLMs or LLMs.
- Familiarity with JAX or Pytorch.
- Experience using coding agents for research automation.
- Preferred: Publications at conferences such as CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS, IROS, or CoRL.
- Preferred: Experience with multimodal prompting, reasoning, or autonomous driving simulation and planning.
- Preferred: Significant contributions to high impact industry AI projects.
Location & details#
- Location: Mountain View, CA.
- Work Modality: Hybrid.
- Term: Summer 2027.
- Compensation: $85 per hour.
About Waymo
Waymo is a technology company that develops automated driving systems. It focuses on mobility and road safety through its Waymo Driver technology. The firm operates as a private organization and employs between 1,001 and 5,000 people. It was founded in 2009 and maintains its headquarters in Mountain View, California.
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