Intern, PhD, Machine Learning - Generative World Models & Controllable Simulation

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    Waymo

    Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company creating a new way forward in mobility.

    1,001-5,000 employeesFounded 2009Mountain View, CaliforniaTechnology, Information and Internet
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    About the role#

    This internship focuses on the development of foundation world models for autonomous driving. You will work on generative models and simulation technology to improve how our systems perceive and interact with the environment. This is a full-time, paid, hybrid position based in Mountain View, California, for the Summer 2027 term.

    What you'll do#

    • Design, implement, and scale controllable generation and test-time compute algorithms, including multimodal conditioning and critic-guided flow or diffusion steering.
    • Investigate multimodal sensor and semantic latent conditioning to advance holistic world simulation.
    • Use learned realism critics and agentic autoresearch workflows on large-scale TPU clusters to evaluate interactive realism, scenario synthesis, and consistency.
    • Write clean, modular, and well-tested JAX code for core simulation and world-modeling codebases.
    • Collaborate with researchers across the Sim Realism, Foundation Models, and Closed-Loop Training teams.

    What you'll need#

    • Current enrollment in a PhD program for Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related field.
    • An anticipated graduation date between December 2027 and August 2028, with plans to return to your degree program for at least one academic term after the internship.
    • Strong tensor implementation and debugging skills in Python and JAX/Flax or PyTorch.
    • Hands-on experience training and modifying neural architectures such as Transformers, Diffusion/Flow-Matching models, or deep RL/critic networks.
    • Research experience in at least one of these areas: continuous flow matching, score-based diffusion guidance, test-time compute, parameter-efficient finetuning, 4D/video tokenization, latent dynamics alignment, inverse RL, or multi-agent trajectory modeling.
    • Preferred: First-author publications at top-tier machine learning, computer vision, or robotics venues.
    • Preferred: Experience with multi-agent closed-loop simulation, adversarial traffic generation, or Sim2Real discriminator stabilization.
    • Preferred: Experience profiling and scaling distributed training and inference workloads on TPUs or multi-node GPUs.

    Location & details#

    • Location: Mountain View, California.
    • Term: Summer 2027.
    • Modality: Hybrid.
    • Compensation: $85 per hour.
    Relevant fieldsComputer Science

    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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