Behavior & Planning (ML Research) Intern

Aurora; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 72,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Aurora is seeking Summer 2027 Behavior & Planning Interns to contribute to how the Aurora Driver forecasts, plans, and learns from data. You will explore ML models for motion planning and prediction, under mentorship, on real-world datasets, with an emphasis on safety and robustness.

Join a team that tackles complex autonomy challenges and collaborates across ML, robotics, and software, with compensation based on degree and location (SF/MBay or Pittsburgh).

Qualifications

• Pursuing a Bachelors, Masters or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, or a related field, with a research or ML focus.
• Strong ML foundations with hands-on experience in PyTorch, including custom dataloaders, architectures, and loss functions.
• Exposure to imitation learning, reinforcement learning, or motion planning.
• Experience training models on large-scale, non-toy datasets or benchmarks.
• Ability to reason mathematically about optimization objectives.
• Awareness of the compounding-error / distribution-shift problem in imitation learning.

Responsibilities

• Develop end-to-end planning or prediction models for the Aurora Driver using imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and/or classical motion planning.
• Formulate ambiguous driving-behavior problems as concrete ML or optimization problems.
• Reason about competing objectives (e.g. progress vs. safety) and uncertainty in your model design and evaluation.
• Work with autonomy/robotics-scale datasets and benchmarks, not just toy datasets.
• Present a project plan and regular progress updates to the team, working closely with a mentor.

Skills

PyTorch experience

Imitation learning

Reinforcement learning

Large-scale datasets

Optimization reasoning

Education

Bachelor/Master/PhD in CS/Robotics or related field

Job description

Who We Are

Aurora’s mission is to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly.

Who We Are

Aurora’s mission is to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly.

The Aurora Driver will create a new era in mobility and logistics, one that will bring a safer, more efficient, and more accessible future to everyone.

At Aurora, you will tackle massively complex problems alongside other passionate, intelligent individuals, growing as an expert while expanding your knowledge. For the latest news from Aurora, visit aurora.tech or follow us on LinkedIn.

What We Are Looking For

We're searching for Summer 2027 Behavior & Planning Interns. You'll work on how the Aurora Driver decides what to do — forecasting how other agents move, planning and selecting trajectories, and the imitation-learning/reinforcement-learning models behind motion planning.

In this role you will

• Develop end-to-end planning or prediction models for the Aurora Driver using imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and/or classical motion planning
• Formulate ambiguous driving-behavior problems as concrete ML or optimization problems
• Reason about competing objectives (e.g. progress vs. safety) and uncertainty in your model design and evaluation
• Work with autonomy/robotics-scale datasets and benchmarks, not just toy datasets
• Present a project plan and regular progress updates to the team, working closely with a mentor

Required Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a Bachelors, Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, or a related field, with a research or ML focus
• Strong ML foundations with hands-on experience in PyTorch, including custom dataloaders, architectures, and loss functions
• Some exposure to imitation learning, reinforcement learning, or motion planning
• Experience training models on large-scale, non-toy datasets or benchmarks
• Ability to reason mathematically about optimization objectives
• Awareness of the compounding-error / distribution-shift problem in imitation learning

Desirable Qualifications

• Publication record at a peer-reviewed venue
• Experience with constrained optimization or preference tuning (e.g. RLHF, DPO)
• Experience with online reinforcement learning or interactive learning (e.g. DAgger)

Compensation

The hourly pay rate for this internship in Mountain View or San Francisco is:

• $52.00 per hour for interns pursuing a bachelor’s degree;
• $58.00 per hour for interns pursuing a master’s degree; and
• $65.00 per hour for interns pursuing a doctoral degree.

The hourly pay rate for this internship in Pittsburgh is:

• $47.00 per hour for interns pursuing a bachelor’s degree;
• $52.00 per hour for interns pursuing a master’s degree; and
• $58.00 per hour for interns pursuing a doctoral degree.

Working at Aurora

At Aurora, we bring together extraordinarily talented and experienced people united by the strength of our values. We operate with integrity, set outrageous goals, and build a culture where we win together — all without any jerks.

We believe in-person work increases collaboration, empathy, and our ability to lead effectively. As a result, Aurorans are expected to work from the office at least 3 days per week, with some roles requiring more frequent in-office presence, up to 5 days per week, based on operational needs.

Our Careers page provides insight into what it is like to work at Aurora, and you can find all the latest updates in our Newsroom.

Our commitment to safety

At the core of everything we do is our commitment to safety. Building best-in-class self-driving technology will take time, and we believe that each employee at Aurora has a role in contributing to safety, every step of the way. Aurora expects commitment to our safety policies from every employee, and seeks candidates who take an active responsibility, can contribute to building an atmosphere of trust, and invest in the organization’s long-term success by prioritizing working safely, no matter what.

Our commitment to inclusion

Aurora considers candidates without regard to their race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy status, parent or caregiver status, ancestry, political affiliation, veteran and/or military status, physical or mental disability, or any other status protected by federal or state law. Aurora considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law. We are also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at [e-mail].

For California applicants, information collected and processed as part of your application and any job applications you choose to submit is subject to Aurora’s California Employment Privacy Policy.