Waymo
2027 Summer Intern, PhD, Research, VLM Harnesses for AV Planning
Mountain View, CA, USA +1 · Internship · Posted Oct 19, 2026
- Location
- Mountain View, CA, USA
Mountain View, California, United States - Experience
- 3+ years of experience with Deep Learning, Computer Vision, and Generative Models.
- Education
- Currently enrolled in a PhD program in computer science, statistics, applied mathematics, physics, or a related technical field of study.
About the job
Research and build VLM-based harnesses that interpret driving scenarios and produce safe trajectories, then evaluate them in autonomous-driving simulation.
What you'll do
- Design scenario preprocessors and postprocessors that convert driving scenarios into VLM inputs and VLM outputs into feasible, safe trajectories.
- Evaluate VLM driving harnesses in closed-loop simulation and refine representations using driving metrics.
- Conduct research and communicate findings to technical and non-technical audiences, potentially through reports or publications.
What they ask for
- Currently enrolled in a PhD program in computer science, statistics, applied mathematics, physics, or a related technical field.
- Familiarity with major ML frameworks (JAX, Pytorch).
- Experience using coding agents for auto-research.
- 3+ years of experience with Deep Learning, Computer Vision, and Generative Models such as VLMs/LLMs.
Nice to have
- Publications at top-tier conferences or substantial contributions to high-impact industry AI projects.
- Experience with VLMs, multimodal prompting/reasoning, or autonomous-driving simulation and planning.
Pay
$85 USD per hour (hourly PhD pay)
Tools
JAX, Pytorch, VLMs, LLMs
AI focus
Research on VLM harnesses for autonomous-vehicle planning, including scenario representation, multimodal prompting, safe trajectory generation, and closed-loop evaluation.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative