2027 Summer Intern, PhD, Research, Behavior Post-training

First Roles; Mountain View (CA); Hybrid; USD 97,000 - 138,000; Part time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid onsite internship

Job summary

Waymo is seeking a PhD intern for the AI Foundations team to advance machine learning for autonomous driving. You will work hybrid onsite, focusing on synthetic data generation, model training with mixtures of synthetic and logged data, and evaluating sampling methods to improve driving policies.

The role emphasizes collaboration with research leaders, exploring reinforcement learning, generative modeling, and robust evaluation.

Qualifications

• Pursuing a PhD in CS/ML/Robotics/EE or related technical field.
• Familiarity with sampling from large models.
• Experience with post-training methods such as SFT, RL, and preferences.
• Proficiency with PyTorch and Jax.

Responsibilities

• Build tools for sampling, selecting, and discarding synthetic driving data.
• Train and evaluate models with mixtures of synthetic and logged data.
• Present and write about methods for synthetic data generation and training.

Skills

Sampling from large models

Post-training methods (SFT, RL)

PyTorch

Jax

Robotics knowledge

Education

PhD in Computer Science / Machine Learning / Robotics / Electrical Engineering

Tools

PyTorch

Jax

Job description

## About this roleWaymo is an autonomous driving technology company with the mission to be the world's most trusted driver. Since its start as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has focused on building the Waymo Driver—The World's Most Experienced DriverTM—to improve access to mobility while saving thousands of lives now lost to traffic crashes. The Waymo Driver powers Waymo’s fully autonomous ride-hail service and can also be applied to a range of vehicle platforms and product use cases. The Waymo Driver has provided over ten million rider-only trips, enabled by its experience autonomously driving over 100 million miles on public roads and tens of billions in simulation across 15+ U.S. states.The mission of the Waymo AI Foundations team is to develop machine learning solutions addressing open problems in autonomous driving, towards the goal of safely operating Waymo vehicles in dozens of cities and under all driving conditions. As part of our work, we also initiate and foster collaborations with other research teams in Alphabet. AI Foundations areas that we are currently focusing on include reinforcement learning, learning from demonstration, generative modeling, Bayesian inference, hierarchical learning, and robust evaluation.Waymo interns partner with leaders in the industry on projects that create impact to the company. We believe learning is a two-way street: applying your knowledge while providing you with opportunities to expand your skill-set. Interns are an important part of our culture and our recruiting pipeline. Join us at Waymo for a fun and rewarding internship!You will:Build tools for sampling, selecting, and discarding synthetic driving data with testable hypotheses of how that data will lead to improvementTrain and evaluate models with mixtures of synthetic and logged dataPresent and write about methods for synthetic data generation and trainingYou have:Currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, Electrical Engineering or a related technical fieldFamiliarity with methods of sampling from large modelsExperience with post-training methods such as SFT, RL, and preferencesModern deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch and JaxWe prefer:Experience working with open and closed loop decision making models in roboticsExperience with synthetic data generation and evaluationPrior projects using LLM-as-a-judgeNote: This will be a hybrid onsite internship position. We will accept resumes on a rolling basis until the role is filled. To be in consideration for multiple roles, you will need to apply to each one individually - please apply to the top 3 roles you are interested in.The expected hourly rate for this full-time position is listed below. Interns are also eligible to participate in the Company’s generous benefits programs, subject to eligibility requirements.Hourly PhD Pay$85—$85 USD