Machine Learning Research Scientist, Behavior Planning and Prediction

Nuro; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 160,000 - 241,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus

Equity

Benefits package

Job summary

Nuro in Mountain View, CA is seeking a Machine Learning Research Scientist to advance behavior planning and prediction for autonomous driving. You will develop scalable ML models and collaborate with autonomy teams to translate research into real-world vehicle software.

The role emphasizes self-supervised learning, sequential decision making, and robust trajectory prediction, with opportunities to publish and contribute to exciting state-of-the-art methods while shaping the future of mobility.

Qualifications

• You have an M.Sc. or Ph.D. focusing on CS, AI, Mathematics, or related field.
• You have research experience in sequential decision making, imitation learning, deep RL, generative modeling, large models, or robotics ML.
• You have strong Python programming (required) and C++ (beneficial).
• You have publications in top conferences (e.g. NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, RSS, ICRA).

Responsibilities

• Work on scalable ML-based planning and prediction for safe vehicle trajectories.
• Research generative sequence modeling and sequential decision making.
• Mitigate uncertainties across autonomy components and develop holistic solutions.
• Collaborate with autonomy teams to translate research into real vehicle software.

Skills

Python

C++

Sequential decision making

Imitation Learning

Deep Reinforcement Learning

Generative modeling

Large models

Machine learning for robotics

Education

M.S./Ph.D. in CS/AI/Math

Job description

Machine Learning Research Scientist, Behavior Planning and Prediction

Who We Are

Nuro believes self-driving vehicles are the most immediate and profound opportunity for AI to drive positive change in the physical world. Safer streets, more time for what matters, and easier access to the world around us, that’s why we’re building a universal autonomy platform: self-driving for all roads and all rides.

Founded in 2016, Nuro is a physical AI company developing Level 4 autonomous driving technology for a wide range of vehicles, use cases, and markets. Powered by the Nuro Driver™, our universal autonomy platform enables the global mobility ecosystem to deploy autonomy at scale, from robotaxis and logistics fleets to personal vehicles.

With years of real-world deployment experience and a flexible, partner-led business model, Nuro is working toward a future where millions of autonomous vehicles powered by our technology help make everyday life safer, easier, and more connected.

Nuro has raised over $2B in capital from Uber, NVIDIA, Google, Softbank, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, and other leading investors.

About the Role

The mandate of the learned behavior team is to use advanced machine learning techniques to accelerate software progress. In this role, you will work closely with the software vertical teams to understand their pain points and explore novel and advanced machine learning methods to solve practical real-world challenging problems. To name a few, using self-supervised learning to learn robust representations, exploring techniques for out-of-distribution detection to solve long tail problems, adjusting reinforcement learning techniques for motion planning, working on trajectory prediction and motion planning, investigating the robustness of models to mitigate uncertainties, or trying to build an end-to-end driving system. If you love solving challenging new problems with a mindset of deriving practical solutions to eventually be used on the vehicle, come join us!

About the Work

• Work on scalable machine learning based planning and prediction systems to generate safe and feasible trajectories for autonomous driving.
• Research generative sequence modeling and sequential decision making. Research backgrounds we are looking for but not limited to are:
• Nice to have: Embodied AI for robotics, Causal reasoning, Model interpretability and explainability, Joint prediction and planning.
• Mitigate uncertainties accumulated through interconnected autonomy components.
• Collaborate across autonomy teams while developing holistic solutions to top autonomy challenges. Understand issues, propose ideas, prioritize work and develop solutions to solve them.
• Derive practical solutions and deploy them on real-world vehicles.

About You

You have deep expertise and prior experience in some or many of the following areas:

• You have an M.Sc. or Ph.D. (preferable) focusing on one or more of the following areas: Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics, or a closely related field
• You have subject matter expertise and research in one or more of the following areas: sequential decision making, Imitation Learning, Deep Reinforcement Learning, generative modeling, large models (pretraining/finetuning), machine learning for robotics.
• You have strong problem solving and programming skills in Python (required) and C++ (beneficial)
• Strong culture fit and good team player
• Demonstrated research publications in top conferences (e.g. NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, CVPR, RSS, CoRL, ICRA)

At Nuro, we celebrate differences and are committed to a diverse workplace that fosters inclusion and psychological safety for all employees. Nuro is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and expressly prohibits any form of workplace discrimination based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristics.

At Nuro, your base pay is one part of your total compensation package. For this position, the reasonably expected pay range is between $160,360 and $240,540/ year for the level at which this job has been scoped. Your base pay will depend on several factors, including your experience, qualifications, education, location, and skills. In the event that you are considered for a different level, a higher or lower pay range would apply. This position is also eligible for an annual performance bonus, equity, and a competitive benefits package.