PhD Research Intern — Foundation Models & Post-Training

Waymo LLC; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 97,000 - 138,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Benefits program

Hybrid onsite internship

Job summary

Waymo LLC in San Francisco is seeking a PhD candidate for a hybrid onsite internship in AI foundations, focusing on reinforcement learning, large foundation models, and robust evaluation.

You will define research goals, set up datasets and training code, document progress, and adapt experiments based on team feedback. Ideal candidates have hands-on model training, familiarity with PyTorch/JAX, and strong analytical skills, with ability to write clean, reliable code.

Qualifications

• Pursuing a PhD in CS, Robotics, ML or related field.
• Knowledge of pre-training and post-training of large foundation models.
• Hands-on experience training modern AI models.
• Strong analytical skills and ability to interpret experimental results.

Responsibilities

• Define research goals, setup dataset and training code to hill-climb model performance, analyze results and define next experiments.
• Write a clear document communicating with team members.
• Incorporate team feedback to adjust setup, experiments and research directions.

Skills

Foundation models

AI model training

Analytical skills

Clean code

Education

PhD candidate in Computer Science, Robotics, or Machine Learning

Tools

PyTorch

JAX

Job description

Waymo LLC in San Francisco is seeking a PhD candidate for a hybrid onsite internship in AI foundations, focusing on reinforcement learning, large foundation models, and robust evaluation.

You will define research goals, set up datasets and training code, document progress, and adapt experiments based on team feedback. Ideal candidates have hands-on model training, familiarity with PyTorch/JAX, and strong analytical skills, with ability to write clean, reliable code.