PhD Research Intern, Multi-Agent Driving Simulation

This internship opportunity is with the Offline Driving Intelligence team working on ML-Agents, within Zoox’s broader Foundation Models organization. The team focuses on creating driving policies that behave like humans (in driving simulation environments). We are developing multi-agent simulation, tackling open research problems at the frontier of large-scale reinforcement and imitation learning.

Interns on this team will have the opportunity to develop state-of-the-art agent policies, contribute to publishable research, and receive mentorship from experienced researchers in the field. Interns will work with a mentor to address a major open research question currently facing the team. There is a direct path from the novel research of this internship to being used in production as part of the simulation system that tests Zoox’s autonomous driving software.

Requirements

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

Qualifications

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)

Bonus Qualifications

Experience with autonomous driving

Experience with robotics planning

Experience with inverse reinforcement learning

Experience with multi-agent reinforcement learning

Compensation

The monthly salary for this position is $9,500. Compensation will vary based on geographic location.

Additional benefits may include medical insurance, and a housing stipend (relocation assistance will be offered based on eligibility).

Accommodations
If you need an accommodation to participate in the application or interview process please reach out to accommodations@zoox.com or your assigned recruiter.

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