Founded in 2016 in Silicon Valley, Pony.ai has quickly become a global leader in autonomous mobility and is a pioneer in extending autonomous mobility technologies and services at a rapidly expanding footprint of sites around the world. Operating Robotaxi, Robotruck and Personally Owned Vehicles (POV) business units, Pony.ai is an industry leader in the commercialization of autonomous driving and is committed to developing the safest autonomous driving capabilities on a global scale. Pony.ai’s leading position has been recognized, with CNBC ranking Pony.ai #10 on its CNBC Disruptor list of the 50 most innovative and disruptive tech companies of 2022. In June 2023, Pony.ai was recognized on the XPRIZE and Bessemer Venture Partners inaugural “XB100” 2023 list of the world’s top 100 private deep tech companies, ranking #12 globally. As of August 2023, Pony.ai has accumulated nearly 21 million miles of autonomous driving globally. Pony.ai went public at NASDAQ in November 2024.
Responsibility- Work with experts in the field of self-driving vehicles on designing and developing large-scale foundation models trained on vast amounts of real world data.
- Frame the open-ended real-world problems into well-defined ML problems; develop and apply cutting-edge ML approaches (deep learning, reinforcement learning, imitation learning, etc) to these problems; scale them to data pipelines; and streamline them to run in real-time on the cars.
- Develop and deploy deep learning models, including vision language models (VLMs) and Large Language Models (LLMs)
- Design and implement multi-modality and multi-task perception models focusing on 3D object detection and tracking, segmentation, semantics understanding, video understanding, scene understanding, traffic control, or trajectory prediction, etc.
- Optimize deep learning models to run robustly under tight run-time constraints.
Requirements
- Currently pursuing a Masters or PhD program in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or similar field
- Strong background in deep learning, with experience in model design, training and evaluation.
- Experience with deep learning research and tools.
- Proficiency in software design and development using Python and C++.
- Experience working with large-scale datasets, data preprocessing, and pipeline management.
Preferred Experience
- Publications on top-tier conferences like CVPR/ICCV/ECCV/ICLR/ICML/NeurIPS/ICLR/AAAI
- Experience in applying ML/DL for behavior prediction, imitation learning, motion planning.
- Experience in deploying deep learning algorithms for real time applications, with limited computing resources.
- Experience in convex optimization, computational geometry or linear algebra.
- Experience in GPU/CUDA/TensorRT
- Previous internships involving large-scale deep learning models and systems
- Preferred graduate before Dec 2026
Note
- This position is rolling based and it can start any time.
- This position is fully onsite in Fremont, at least 3 months.
Compensation
- Master: $7000/month
- PhD: $10,000/month
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Skills Required
- Currently pursuing a Masters or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or similar field
- Strong background in deep learning
- Experience with deep learning research and tools
- Proficiency in software design and development using Python and C++
- Experience working with large-scale datasets, data preprocessing, and pipeline management
Pony.AI Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Pony.AI and has not been reviewed or approved by Pony.AI.
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Healthcare Strength — Healthcare coverage is characterized as comprehensive, including medical, dental, and vision, alongside disability/life insurance and an Employee Assistance Program. This makes the core insurance offering a consistent strength within the overall package.
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Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — Daily meals and on-site food perks stand out as especially generous, with free meals, snacks, and drinks repeatedly highlighted. This creates a tangible day-to-day benefit that can materially reduce employees’ out-of-pocket costs during in-office work.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity participation is presented as a standard part of the compensation mix, contributing to the perceived competitiveness of total packages in technical roles. At the same time, perceived value can vary with liquidity timing and broader market performance, shaping how accessible that value feels in practice.
Pony.AI Insights
What We Do
Pony AI Inc. (“Pony.ai”) is a global leader in the large-scale commercialization of autonomous mobility. Leveraging its vehicle-agnostic Virtual Driver technology, full-stack autonomous driving technology that seamlessly integrates its proprietary software, hardware, and services, Pony.ai is developing a commercially viable and sustainable business model that enables the mass production and deployment of vehicles across transportation use cases. Founded in 2016, Pony.ai has expanded its presence across China, Europe, East Asia, the Middle East, and other regions, ensuring widespread accessibility to its advanced technology. Pony.ai is among the first in China to obtain licenses to operate fully driverless vehicles in all four Tier-1 cities in China (Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen) and has begun to offer public-facing, fare-charging robotaxi services without safety drivers in Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Pony.ai operates a fleet consisting of over 250 robotaxis. To date, Pony.ai has driven nearly 45 million autonomous testing and operation kilometers on open roads worldwide.
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