Senior/Staff Research Engineer — Vision-Language-Action Models (Autonomous Driving)
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Overview
Schedule
Full-time
Career level
Senior-level
Remote
On-site
Compensation
$170,000-$260,000/year
Benefits
401k Matching/Retirement Savings
Job Description
PlusAI is a Physical AI company pioneering AI-based virtual driver software for factory-built autonomous trucks. Headquartered in Silicon Valley with operations in the United States and Europe, Plus was named by Fast Company as one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies. Partners including TRATON GROUP’s Scania, MAN, and International brands, Hyundai Motor Company, Iveco Group, Bosch, and DSV are working with Plus to accelerate the deployment of next-generation autonomous trucks. If you’re ready to make a huge impact and drive the future of autonomy, Plus is looking for talented individuals to join its fast-growing teams.
You will join our core AI team at the frontier of autonomous decision-making, building the Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models that form SuperDrive's reasoning layer. You'll train VLA models that generate high-level driving decisions and trajectory guidance for on-board strategic decision-making, and design the knowledge distillation and compression techniques that transition large models onto on-board compute.
Responsibilities
- Design, train, and evaluate Vision-Language-Action models that generate high-level driving decisions and trajectory guidance in support of Plus's reasoning layer.
- Own a VLA workstream end to end — data, architecture, large-scale training, and on-vehicle validation.
- Build training and evaluation pipelines and rigorous metrics for VLA performance in driving contexts.
- Develop distillation and compression recipes to deploy large reasoning models on on-board compute.
- Apply SFT and RL post-training to improve reasoning, robustness, and long-tail behavior.
- Collaborate with perception, planning, and platform teams to bring models from research to production
Required qualifications
- M.S. minimum, Ph.D. preferred in CS, EE, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related field.
- 3+ years implementing and training models in a deep learning framework (PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX).
- Direct, hands-on experience training vision-language / vision-language-action models.
- Hands-on experience with model training, evaluation, and deployment in production.
- Thorough understanding of state-of-the-art vision-language / VLA models, diffusion, flow matching, and transformers.
- Experience with large-scale / distributed model training.
Preferred Qualifications
- Model distillation, quantization, and inference optimization (ONNX/TensorRT, mixed precision, custom kernels).
- SFT and RL post-training of large multimodal models.
- Hands-on experience with multi-modal sensor data (camera, LiDAR, radar).
- Publications at top venues (CVPR, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CoRL, RSS, ICRA).
- Autonomous driving / ADAS experience.
Salary range:
$170,000-$260,00k
Exact compensation may vary based on skills and experience.
Salary range
$170,000-$260,00k
Exact compensation may vary based on skills and experience.
$170,000-$260,00k
Exact compensation may vary based on skills and experience.
Salary range:
$170,000-$260,00k
Exact compensation may vary based on skills and experience.
Your opportunities joining PlusAI
Work, learn and grow in a highly future-oriented, innovative and dynamic field.
Wide range of opportunities for personal and professional development.
Catered free lunch, unlimited snacks and beverages.
Highly competitive salary and benefits package, including 401(k) plan.
Automate your job search with Sonara.
Submit 10x as many applications with less effort than one manual application.
FAQs About Senior/Staff Research Engineer — Vision-Language-Action Models (Autonomous Driving) Jobs at PlusAI
What is the work location for this position at PlusAI?
This job at PlusAI is located in Santa Clara, CA, according to the details provided by the employer. Some roles may also include multiple work locations depending on the requirement.
What pay range can candidates expect for this role at PlusAI?
Candidates can expect a pay range of $170,000 and $260,000 per year.
What employment applies to this position at PlusAI?
PlusAI lists this role as a Full-time position.
What experience level is required for this role at PlusAI?
PlusAI is looking for a candidate with "Senior-level" experience level.
What benefits are offered by PlusAI for this role?
PlusAI offers 401k Matching/Retirement Savings for this position. Actual benefits may vary depending on the employer's policies and employment terms.
What is the process to apply for this position at PlusAI?
You can apply for this role at PlusAI either through Sonara's automated application system, which helps you submit applications 10X faster with minimal effort, or by applying manually using the direct link on the job page.