Senior/Staff Research Engineer — Vision-Language-Action Models (Autonomous Driving)

Rival; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Free lunch

Snacks and beverages

401(k) plan

Job summary

PlusAI, a Physical AI company, seeks experts to advance Vision-Language-Action models for autonomous trucking. You will own data, architecture, and large-scale training, moving models from research to production on on-board compute.

The role requires MS with PhD preferred in related fields, and 3+ years in deep learning model training. Experience with PyTorch/TensorFlow/JAX is expected.

Qualifications

• MS degree minimum, PhD preferred in CS/EE/math/statistics or related field.
• 3+ years implementing and training models in a deep learning framework.
• Hands-on experience training vision-language / VLA models.
• Experience with large-scale distributed model training.

Responsibilities

• Design, train, and evaluate Vision-Language-Action models for driving decisions.
• Own a VLA workstream end to end—from data to on-vehicle validation.
• Build training/evaluation pipelines with rigorous metrics for VLA performance.
• Develop distillation and compression for on-board compute.
• Apply SFT and RL post-training to improve reasoning and robustness.
• Collaborate with perception, planning, and platform teams to production.

Skills

Deep learning

Vision−Language

Production deployment

Distributed training

Education

MS minimum

PhD preferred

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

JAX

ONNX/TensorRT

Job description

PlusAI is a Physical AI company pioneering AI-based virtual driver software for factory-built autonomous trucks. Headquartered in Silicon Valley with operations in the United States and Europe, Plus was named by Fast Company as one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies. Partners including TRATON GROUP’s Scania, MAN, and International brands, Hyundai Motor Company, Iveco Group, Bosch, and DSV are working with Plus to accelerate the deployment of next-generation autonomous trucks. If you’re ready to make a huge impact and drive the future of autonomy, Plus is looking for talented individuals to join its fast-growing teams.

You will join our core AI team at the frontier of autonomous decision-making, building the Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models that form SuperDrive's reasoning layer. You'll train VLA models that generate high-level driving decisions and trajectory guidance for on-board strategic decision-making, and design the knowledge distillation and compression techniques that transition large models onto on-board compute.

Responsibilities

• Design, train, and evaluate Vision-Language-Action models that generate high-level driving decisions and trajectory guidance in support of Plus's reasoning layer.
• Own a VLA workstream end to end — data, architecture, large-scale training, and on-vehicle validation.
• Build training and evaluation pipelines and rigorous metrics for VLA performance in driving contexts.
• Develop distillation and compression recipes to deploy large reasoning models on on-board compute.
• Apply SFT and RL post-training to improve reasoning, robustness, and long-tail behavior.
• Collaborate with perception, planning, and platform teams to bring models from research to production

Required qualifications

• M.S. minimum, Ph.D. preferred in CS, EE, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related field.
• 3+ years implementing and training models in a deep learning framework (PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX).
• Direct, hands-on experience training vision-language / vision-language-action models.
• Hands-on experience with model training, evaluation, and deployment in production.
• Thorough understanding of state-of-the-art vision-language / VLA models, diffusion, flow matching, and transformers.
• Experience with large-scale / distributed model training.

Preferred Qualifications

• Model distillation, quantization, and inference optimization (ONNX/TensorRT, mixed precision, custom kernels).
• SFT and RL post-training of large multimodal models.
• Hands-on experience with multi-modal sensor data (camera, LiDAR, radar).
• Publications at top venues (CVPR, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CoRL, RSS, ICRA).
• Autonomous driving / ADAS experience.

Salary range

$170,000-$260,00k

Exact compensation may vary based on skills and experience.

$170,000 - $260,000 a year

$170,000-$260,00k

Exact compensation may vary based on skills and experience.

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Your opportunities joining PlusAI

Work, learn and grow in a highly future-oriented, innovative and dynamic field.

Wide range of opportunities for personal and professional development.

Catered free lunch, unlimited snacks and beverages.

Highly competitive salary and benefits package, including 401(k) plan.