Senior Software Engineer, Vision Language Models

Mission Summary

At Motional, data play a critical role in fueling our ML-centered autonomous driving vehicle. Our robo-taxi fleet collects petabytes of data on the road every day – the Data Mining team is mining & filtering the massive influx of fleet data by developing billion-scale data workflows and state-of-the-art mining algorithms. Through our mining and learning frameworks we continuously improve the on-road performance of ML products for perception, prediction & planning with every mile driven.

We mine for model errors, anomalies, rare objects & long-tail driving scenarios across millions of driving hours – these are used for laser-focused ML model training and continuous edge case validation. We are looking for an engineer to spearhead new mining strategies & workflows and help deliver high-quality data that improve our core ML products.

What you’ll be doing:

• Develop data products utilizing foundation models such as multi-modal encoding models (CLIP-style models), vision language models (VLMs) and large language models (LLMs) and adapt them to the autonomous driving domain via pre-training, fine-tuning and prompt optimization.
• Own large-scale mining workflows that surface rare objects, model errors & long-tail events.
• Build high-quality datasets to improve ML products through training & edge case validation.
• Contribute to data processing pipelines that fuel our in-house billion-scale image search engine.
• Provide statistical depth on model performance & generalization through rigorous error analysis across complex driving scenarios.

What we’re looking for:

• BS in computer science, similar discipline or equivalent experience.
• 3+ years of experience architecting and shipping high-performance & large-scale distributed systems.
• Experience with deploying vision language models (VLMs) or large-scale vision encoders (e.g. CLIP) in production settings for image/video understanding, object detection or searching.
• Experience with core cloud services (e.g. AWS’s S3, Athena, RDS or similar) and modern vector databases (OpenSearch, Weaviate, Pinecone etc.).
• Solid software engineering principles – such as software design patterns, configuration management, source control, build processes, code reviews, testing methodologies, app containerization, continuous integration etc.
• Fluency in Python and experience on production-quality software development.

Bonus points (not required):

• MS/PhD in computer science, machine learning, statistics or computer vision.
• Experience with at least one of the following ML techniques/models: Few-shot Learning, Metric Learning, Information Retrieval, Recommender Systems, Contrastive Learning, Semi-supervised Learning, Object Detection / Segmentation / Prediction.
• Experience with PyTorch or other deep learning frameworks (Jax, Tensorflow etc.).
• Experience with A/B testing methodologies and metrics tracking systems.
• Experience with machine learning in the autonomous driving domain.
• Familiarity with autonomous driving sensors (cameras, lidar, radar, localization sensors etc.).

The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors including but not limited to specific skills, experience and expertise, role location, certifications, licenses, and business needs. The estimated compensation range listed in this job posting reflects base salary only. This role may include additional forms of compensation such as a bonus or company equity. The recruiter assigned to this role can share more information about the specific compensation and benefit details associated with this role during the hiring process. 

Candidates for certain positions are eligible to participate in Motional’s benefits program. Motional’s benefits include but are not limited to medical, dental, vision, 401k with a company match, health saving accounts, life insurance, pet insurance, and more.

Salary Range$175,000—$234,000 USD

Motional is a driverless technology company making autonomous vehicles a safe, reliable, and accessible reality. We’re driven by something more.

Our journey is always people first.

We aren’t just developing driverless cars; we’re creating safer roadways, more equitable transportation options, and making our communities better places to live, work, and connect. Our team is made up of engineers, researchers, innovators, dreamers and doers, who are creating a technology with the potential to transform the way we move.

Higher purpose, greater impact.

We’re creating first-of-its-kind technology that will transform transportation. To do so successfully, we must design for everyone in our cities and on our roads. We believe in building a great place to work through a progressive, global culture that is diverse, inclusive, and ensures people feel valued at every level of the organization. Diversity helps us to see the world differently; it’s not only good for our business, it’s the right thing to do.  

Scale up, not starting up.

Our team is behind some of the industry’s largest leaps forward, including the first fully-autonomous cross-country drive in the U.S, the launch of the world’s first robotaxi pilot, and operation of the world’s longest-standing public robotaxi fleet. We’re driven to scale; we’re moving towards commercialization of our technology, and we need team members who are ready to embrace change and challenges.

Formed as a joint venture between Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv, Motional is fundamentally changing how people move through their lives. Headquartered in Boston, Motional has operations in the U.S and Asia. For more information, visit  www.Motional.com and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

 

Motional AD Inc. is an EOE. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. To comply with Federal Law, we participate in E-Verify. All newly-hired employees are queried through this electronic system established by the DHS and the SSA to verify their identity and employment eligibility.