Research Intern - Reinforcement Learning, Self-Driving

About the role

Applied Intuition, Inc. is powering the future of physical AI. Founded in 2017 and now valued at $15 billion, the Silicon Valley company is creating the digital infrastructure needed to bring intelligence to every moving machine on the planet. Applied Intuition services the automotive, defense, trucking, construction, mining and agriculture industries in three core areas: tools and infrastructure, operating systems, and autonomy.

Eighteen of the top 20 global automakers, as well as the United States military and its allies, trust the company’s solutions to deliver physical intelligence. Applied Intuition is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with offices in Washington, D.C.; San Diego; Ft. Walton Beach, Florida; Ann Arbor, Michigan; London; Stuttgart; Munich; Stockholm; Bangalore; Seoul; and Tokyo.

We are an in-office company, and our expectation is that full-time employees primarily work from their Applied Intuition office 5 days a week. However, we also recognize the importance of flexibility and trust our employees to manage their schedules responsibly. This may include occasional remote work, starting the day with morning meetings from home before heading to the office, or leaving earlier when needed to accommodate family commitments. This in-office expectation does not apply to contractor positions

About the Role

We are looking for multiple passionate Research Interns to join the Research Group at Applied Intuition. The mission of the group is to create cutting-edge technology enabling next-generation physical AI, with emphasis on the two most challenging applications reshaping our everyday life: end-to-end autonomous driving and robotic generalist.

We have a group composed of leading experts from top institutions and companies, recognized for their exceptional academic and industry contributions-including eight Best Paper awards at premier conferences and journals such as CVPR and ICRA. Learn more at appliedintuition.com/research.

Supported by industry-leading tools and infra, researchers can access millions of miles of data from large fleets, and deploy methods they develop into various autonomous and robotic systems including self-driving cars/trucks, autonomous mining/construction machines, humanoid robots and dexterous hands. In addition to your research contributions, you will contribute to and learn from best practices in the autonomy and robotics industries within our fast-paced and customer-focused culture. Improvements deployed to our system immediately help our customers with their programs and deliver value to our business.

At Applied Intuition, You Will

• Conduct research on reinforcement learning (RL) related topics including large-scale self-play RL, VLA post-training, large-scale closed-loop RL based on neural simulation with applications to autonomous driving
• Diving into fundamental topics on RL with broader applications and potential imitative behavior learning incorporation, and relevant topics such as reward learning
• Work closely with the Research Scientists and Engineers on high quality research publications for submission to top-tier conferences

We’re Looking for Someone Who Has

• Strong research background and skills on relevant topics, and the ability to work both independently and collaboratively on projects
• Current PhD (or MSc) studies in machine learning, computer vision and graphics, robotics
• 1+ year of research experience in autonomy, self-driving, or related field
• Passion for next-generation, scalable autonomy and robotics

Don’t meet every single requirement? If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

For Us-based Roles

Applied Intuition is committed to providing an accessible and inclusive application and interview experience to applicants who are disabled veterans and other applicants with disabilities or medical conditions. If you require an accommodation please contact. We will work with you!