Research Intern, World Models and Synthetic Data for Autonomous Driving - Summer 2027 - CA, Santa Clara, United States
$20 - $71 USD yearly
Originally posted 9 October 2026 by the employer.
About the role
This internship focuses on advancing safe autonomy through generative world models and synthetic data within the Autonomous Vehicle (AV) Applied Research team. The role involves developing models to understand, simulate, and reason about complex driving environments.
What you'll do
- Research and prototype generative world models, traffic world models, and synthetic-data generation methods for autonomous driving.
- Develop traffic world models that capture multi-agent interactions and realistic, reactive behaviors, enabling simulation and generation of complex driving scenarios.
- Develop methods for controllable generation of diverse, interactive, and safety-critical driving scenarios.
- Explore how generative video models, multimodal foundation models, traffic simulation, data curation, active learning, self-supervised learning, and simulation can improve training-data quality, diversity, and coverage.
- Design and conduct experiments to understand how generated data affects AV model performance, robustness, and generalization.
- Translate recent advances in generative modeling and machine learning into practical approaches for autonomous driving.
What you'll need
- Currently pursuing a Ph.D. or M.S. in Computer Science, Electrical/Computer Engineering, Robotics, or a related field, with research experience in deep learning, computer vision, generative modeling, multimodal learning, robotics, or autonomous driving.
- Strong foundations in machine learning and deep learning, with hands-on experience developing and evaluating neural-network models.
- Experience in one or more of the following areas: generative models, video generation, multimodal learning, 3D computer vision, autonomous driving, or robotics.
- Strong mathematical and analytical skills and an interest in designing rigorous experiments.
- Strong Python programming skills and experience with modern deep learning frameworks.
Skills: generative world models, synthetic data, autonomous driving, machine learning, deep learning
This role has been open 1 day — well below the 76-day median for AI/ML Hardware Engineering roles.
AI/ML Hardware Engineering · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
512
|
Median days open
76 d
|
Median salary
$235k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | NVIDIA | All employers we track in this specialty (512 roles · 76 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 88 | 512 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 949 | 6028 · 146 employers |
| Median days open | 52 d | 76 d (−24 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $235k |
Skills observed across this category: generative world models, synthetic data, autonomous driving, machine learning, deep learning
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 98 open roles · median 115 d
- NVIDIA (this employer) · 89 open roles · median 54 d
- AMD · 41 open roles · median 67 d
- Micron Technology · 28 open roles · median 66 d
- Mobileye · 19 open roles · median 73 d
- Analog Devices · 17 open roles · median 29 d
How we counted: 512 open AI/ML Hardware Engineering (AI ML Hardware) roles from 76 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 11 Oct 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there — it is counted in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.