Senior Research Manager, World Model Evaluation

NVIDIA Gruppe; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 272,000 - 431,250; Full time

Job summary

NVIDIA Gruppe is seeking a Senior Research Manager to lead world-model evaluation and benchmarking efforts in Santa Clara, California. The successful candidate will develop a research agenda that defines useful world models for Physical AI and build a team of research scientists focused on innovative evaluation techniques.

The ideal applicant will possess a strong research background in machine learning and robotics with experience leading impactful research initiatives. The position offers a competitive salary package along with equity and benefits eligibility.

Qualifications

• Strong research background in machine learning, computer vision, multimodal AI, robotics, and world models.
• Experience leading research teams with measurable scientific impact.
• Deep understanding of modern foundation models and self-supervised learning.
• Experience designing evaluation datasets and metrics for complex ML systems.
• Familiarity with open‑system analysis techniques.
• 12+ years of relevant research experience and 5+ years of management experience.

Responsibilities

• Lead a team of Research Scientists in world‑model evaluation and benchmarking.
• Define the scientific roadmap for model evaluation metrics and feedback loops.
• Develop benchmarks for physical plausibility and spatial reasoning.
• Drive evaluation‑to‑model improvement with various teams.
• Publish papers and establish standards for validity and reproducibility.

Skills

Machine learning

Computer vision

Multimodal AI

World models

Model evaluation

Robotics

Representation learning

Mechanistic interpretability

Education

PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or related field

Job description

We are seeking a Senior Research Manager to lead world‑model evaluation and benchmarking across NVIDIA’s Physical AI model portfolio. The role will build a team and research agenda for evaluating world models through closed‑system and open‑system evaluations, defining what makes a world model useful for Physical AI, discovering model failures, and turning those findings into better data, training recipes, model roadmaps, and downstream systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead a team of Research Scientists focused on world‑model evaluation, benchmarking, and diagnostics for NVIDIA Physical AI models, including world foundation models, world‑action models, synthetic data generation systems, robotics, simulation, and embodied AI workflows.
• Define the scientific roadmap for closed‑system and open‑system evaluation, including open‑loop and closed‑loop benchmarks, metrics, failure taxonomy, model comparison, and evaluation‑to‑training feedback loops.
• Develop benchmarks for physical plausibility, temporal consistency, scene dynamics, object permanence, spatial reasoning, action conditioning, affordances, controllability, long‑horizon coherence, SDG quality, and WAM usefulness.
• Develop open‑system and mechanistic evaluation methods using model internals, including representation probing, causal interventions, activation analysis, ablations, sparse autoencoders, attention and feature analysis, and circuit‑style diagnostics.
• Drive evaluation‑to‑model‑improvement loops with training, post‑training, data curation, simulation, robotics, SDG, WAM, and applied research teams, including failure discovery, data generation, post‑training priorities, model roadmap feedback, and re‑evaluation.
• Publish high‑quality papers, technical reports, benchmarks, and open‑source evaluation artifacts while establishing rigorous standards for validity, reproducibility, dataset hygiene, leakage prevention, and model comparison.

Qualifications

• Strong research background in machine learning, computer vision, multimodal AI, robotics, world models, representation learning, model evaluation, or mechanistic interpretability.
• Experience leading research teams, research programs, or cross‑functional technical initiatives with measurable scientific and product impact.
• Deep understanding of modern foundation models, including video models, vision‑language‑action models, diffusion or flow models, self‑supervised learning, or world‑model architectures.
• Experience designing serious benchmarks, evaluation datasets, metrics, diagnostic tools, or model analysis frameworks for complex ML systems.
• Familiarity with world‑model evaluation and open‑system analysis techniques, such as physical plausibility, temporal consistency, action conditioning, counterfactual reasoning, representation probing, activation patching, causal interventions, sparse autoencoders, or feature attribution.
• PhD, or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Machine Learning, AI, or a related field.
• 12+ overall years of relevant research or engineering experience and 5+ years of management experience.
• Ability to work onsite at NVIDIA’s Santa Clara headquarters; this is not a remote position.

Benefits & Compensation

• Base salary range: $272,000 – $431,250 USD.
• Equity and benefits eligibility.

NVIDIA is committed to fostering an inclusive work environment and is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate (including in hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law.