2025 Summer Intern, PhD, Research - Open Vocabulary Perception
Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company with the mission to be the most trusted driver. Since its start as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has focused on building the Waymo Driver—The World's Most Experienced Driver™—to improve access to mobility while saving thousands of lives now lost to traffic crashes. The Waymo Driver powers Waymo One, a fully autonomous ride-hailing service, and can also be applied to a range of vehicle platforms and product use cases. The Waymo Driver has provided over one million rider-only trips, enabled by its experience autonomously driving tens of millions of miles on public roads and tens of billions in simulation across 13+ U.S. states.
The mission of the Waymo Research team is to develop machine learning solutions addressing open problems in autonomous driving, towards the goal of safely operating Waymo vehicles in dozens of cities and under all driving conditions. As part of our work, we also initiate and foster collaborations with other research teams in Alphabet. Research areas that we are currently focusing on include reinforcement learning, learning from demonstration, generative modeling, Bayesian inference, hierarchical learning, and robust evaluation.
Waymo interns work alongside leaders in the industry on projects that deliver significant impact to the company. We believe learning is a two-way street: leveraging your knowledge while providing you with opportunities to expand your skill-set. Interns are an important part of our culture and our recruiting pipeline. Join us at Waymo for a fun and rewarding internship!
You will:
- Design state-of-the-art, multi-modal and multi-task perception models
- Perform research into novel techniques to extend the open vocabulary capabilities for perception foundation models
- Publish the developed works for the wider research community
You have:
- Currently pursuing a PhD program in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a similar technical field of study
- Strong track record of high quality ML research, for example demonstrated by conference publications in venues such as CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, etc.
- Experience working with large scale perception models for detection and segmentation
We prefer:
- Experience integrating language and perception models
- Hands-on experience with deep neural networks and familiarity with at least one type of deep learning framework such as PyTorch, Jax, Tensorflow, etc
- Strong coding skills in Python and/or C++
Note: This will be a hybrid onsite internship position. We will accept resumes on a rolling basis until the role is filled. To be in consideration for multiple roles, you will need to apply to each one individually - please apply to the top 3 roles you are interested in.
At Waymo, we don't just accept differences - we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products and our community. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.
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At Waymo, we're excited to offer a unique opportunity for a 2025 Summer Intern in PhD Research focused on Open Vocabulary Perception! Join our passionate team in beautiful Mountain View, CA, as we aim to create the safest and most trusted driver in the world, the Waymo Driver. You’ll be working on cutting-edge technology that powers our fully autonomous ride-hailing service, Waymo One. Your role will involve designing innovative multi-modal and multi-task perception models while researching new techniques to enhance our perception foundation models. With a strong emphasis on collaboration, you'll partner closely with industry leaders and contribute to significant projects that help shape the future of mobility. We believe in an enriching learning experience where your ideas are valued. If you're passionate about machine learning and eager to publish your work for the wider community, this is the perfect setting for you! A PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a similar technical field is just the starting point; we're looking for someone with a history of impactful ML research and a knack for handling large-scale perception models. Sound like you? Dive into a rewarding internship that not only allows you to flex your technical skills in Python or C++ but also supports you in making meaningful contributions to an inclusive and innovative culture at Waymo!
By
Waymo
Waymo’s mission is to make it safe and easy for people and things to move around. With the Waymo Driver, we can improve the world’s mobility while saving thousands of lives.
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