(Senior) Software Engineer - Evaluation

pony.ai; Fremont (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)

401k

Life Insurance

PTO & Holidays

Family Leave

Disability

Free Food & Snacks

Job summary

Pony.ai is seeking engineers to design and build scalable data processing pipelines and backend services that support autonomous mobility platforms, including real-time event processing and LLM workflows.

You will work across components to define evaluation metrics, improve infrastructure, and ensure security, stability, and performance in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• BS/MS or Ph.D in Computer Science or related field.
• Experience with large data set processing and real-time systems.
• Experience in fast-paced engineering environments.

Responsibilities

• Design and build end-to-end data processing pipelines and toolchains for large-scale data collection, batch processing, curation, and multi-dimensional evaluation.
• Design and implement high-performance backend services and distributed architectures capable of handling large-scale real-time event processing.
• Collaborate across complex components to lead design of evaluation metrics, testing frameworks, and advanced simulation environments.
• Leverage and improve open-source distributed technologies to advance infrastructure capabilities and processing efficiency.
• Drive architectural decisions ensuring security, stability, scalability and high performance.
• Establish system monitoring, observability metrics and automated alerting for low latency production operations.
• Build and optimize workflows for Large Language Models (LLMs), guiding model reasoning and guarding against hallucinations.
• Strong programming in C/C++ and Python; solid software design.

Skills

C/C++

Python

Software design

Math foundations

Large-scale systems

Full stack

Statistics

Education

BS/MS or Ph.D in Computer Science

Job description

Founded in 2016 in Silicon Valley, Pony.ai has quickly become a global leader in autonomous mobility and is a pioneer in extending autonomous mobility technologies and services at a rapidly expanding footprint of sites around the world. Operating Robotaxi, Robotruck and Personally Owned Vehicles (POV) business units, Pony.ai is an industry leader in the commercialization of autonomous driving and is committed to developing the safest autonomous driving capabilities on a global scale. Pony.ai’s leading position has been recognized, with CNBC ranking Pony.ai #10 on its CNBC Disruptor list of the 50 most innovative and disruptive tech companies of 2022. In June 2023, Pony.ai was recognized on the XPRIZE and Bessemer Venture Partners inaugural “XB100” 2023 list of the world’s top 100 private deep tech companies, ranking #12 globally. As of August 2023, Pony.ai has accumulated nearly 21 million miles of autonomous driving globally. Pony.ai went public at NASDAQ in November 2024.

Responsibility

• Design and build end-to-end data processing pipelines and toolchains to support large-scale data collection, batch processing, curation, and multi-dimensional evaluation.
• Design and implement high-performance backend services and distributed architectures , capable of handling large-scale real-time event processing.
• Collaborate across complex business components to lead the design of targeted system-level evaluation metrics, testing frameworks, and advanced simulation environments.
• Leverage and improve industry-leading, open-source distributed technologies to continuously advance infrastructure capabilities and processing efficiency.
• Drive critical architectural decisions and technology selection, ensuring rigorous standards for security, stability, scalability, and high performance.
• Establish and maintain comprehensive system monitoring, fine-grained observability metrics, and automated alerting frameworks to ensure low latency and reliable production operations.
• Build and optimize downstream engineering workflows for Large Language Models (LLMs), programmatically steering model reasoning, establishing guardrails, and mitigating hallucinations to ensure reliable outputs.
• Strong programming skills in C/C++, Python, and software design
• Strong foundation in mathematics and theoretical computer science, such as linear algebra, calculus, graph theory, computational geometry, combinatorial optimization algorithms, stochastic processes, and complexity analysis.
• Possessing solid engineering discipline, or demonstrating strong interest and potential in building large‑scale systems, with the ability to maximize performance while keeping complexity and cost to a minimum.
• Pursueing a BS/MS or Ph.D in Computer Science or a related field
• Experience in large data set processing and familiarity with real time systems
• Solid experience in a fast‑paced and structured engineering environment
• Full stack experience including both front end and back end is preferred
• Statistics analysis experience is preferred

Compensation and Benefits

Base Salary Range: $120,000 - $250,000 Annually

Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on many factors, including the candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies, experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Compensation and this role may be eligible for bonuses/incentives and restricted stock units.

Also, we provide the following benefits to eligible employees:

• Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
• Retirement Plan (Traditional and Roth 401k)
• Life Insurance (Basic, Voluntary & AD&D)
• Paid Time Off (Vacation & Public Holidays)
• Family Leave (Maternity, Paternity)
• Short Term & Long Term Disability
• Free Food & Snacks