PhD Research Intern, Offline Driving Intelligence at Zoox · Foster…

Summary: Zoox is developing the first ground-up, fully autonomous vehicle fleet and the supporting ecosystem required to bring this technology to market. The PhD Research Intern will work with the Offline Driving Intelligence team on ML-Agents, focusing on creating agents that behave like humans in driving simulation environments and contributing to publishable research. Responsibilities: - Develop state-of-the-art agent policies - Contribute to publishable research - Work with a mentor to address a major open research question Required Qualifications: - Currently working towards a Ph.D., or advanced degree in a relevant engineering program - Good academic standing - Able to commit to a 12-week internship during one of the following summer 2026 cohorts: May 18th - August 7th OR May 26th - August 14th OR June 15th - September 4th - Ability to relocate to the Bay Area, CA or Seattle, WA for the duration of the internship - Interns at Zoox may not use any proprietary information they are working on as part of their thesis, any published work with their university, or to be distributed to anyone outside of Zoox - Experience with imitation learning (both behavior cloning and closed-loop methods) - Experience with online reinforcement learning - Advanced understanding of Python, PyTorch, and Jax - Experience working in large codebases as part of a team - Has authored publications in top ML/robotics conferences (e.g. NeurIPS, CVPR, ICRA, etc) Preferred Qualifications: - Experience with autonomous driving - Experience with robotics planning - Experience with inverse reinforcement learning - Experience with multi-agent reinforcement learning Required Skills: Imitation Learning, Behavior Cloning, Closed-loop Methods, Online Reinforcement Learning, Python, PyTorch, Jax, Large Codebase Collaboration, Research Publication Authorship, Autonomous Driving, Robotics Planning, Inverse Reinforcement Learning, Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning Benefits: Medical insurance, Housing stipend, Relocation assistance will be offered based on eligibility