The Role
Lead the strategy and development of state-of-the-art end-to-end autonomous driving research, optimizing ML models and collaborating across teams to influence technical decisions.
Summary Generated by Built In
Woven by Toyota is enabling Toyota’s once-in-a-century transformation into a mobility company. Inspired by a legacy of innovating for the benefit of others, our mission is to challenge the current state of mobility through human-centric innovation — expanding what “mobility” means and how it serves society.
Our work centers on four pillars: AD/ADAS, our autonomous driving and advanced driver assist technologies; Arene, our software development platform for software-defined vehicles; Woven City, a test course for mobility; and Cloud & AI, the digital infrastructure powering our collaborative foundation. Business-critical functions empower these teams to execute, and together, we’re working toward one bold goal: a world with zero accidents and enhanced well-being for all.
Team
At Woven by Toyota, we are at the forefront of developing advanced Machine Learning solutions for autonomous driving. Our team tackles groundbreaking challenges in designing state-of-the-art neural networks, pioneering innovative end-to-end architectures, and advancing ML techniques in perception, prediction, and motion planning. We're passionate about pushing the boundaries of autonomous systems through deep learning and optimization, particularly in complex 3D geometric computer vision scenarios. We're seeking passionate innovators and creative problem-solvers eager to redefine mobility through cutting-edge AI and robotics, contributing directly to shaping the future of self-driving technology.
Woven by Toyota is developing a joint project between Toyota Research Institute (TRI) and Woven by Toyota to research and develop a fully end-to-end learned automated driving / ADAS stack. This cross-org collaborative project is synergistic with TRI’s robotics division’s efforts in Diffusion Policy and Large Behavior Models (LBM).
Who are we looking for?
A technical lead who will work with the Lead engineers across Woven and TRI to help drive the strategy of the research development for end-to-end driving. The technical lead will also help bridge the connections between the research project and the production programs. This role requires strong communication skills and a collaborative mindset to navigate the joint nature of the Woven / TRI collaboration. The applicant is expected to have a wide technical knowledge of the state-of-the-art approaches in robotics/autonomous driving to define vision, scope, and to initiate longer-term open-research efforts.
Responsibilities
- Drive the strategy and development of state-of-the-art initiatives to accelerate end-to-end autonomous driving research, including onboard and offline applications, across Woven and TRI tech leads.
- Identify opportunities, resolve ambiguities, propose initiatives and execute to transfer successful research efforts to the production path.
- Lead the design, development, experimentation and benchmarks of ML models for e2e autonomous driving, ranging from data strategy, multistage training approaches, model selection and experimentation, as well as evaluation methods and deployment.
- Identify opportunities across the training stack and initiate efforts to increase the scalability of ML pipeline to support the training of large foundation models, and to optimize edge deployment needs of sota architectures.
- Collaborate, across timezones, with cross-functional teams such as Data, Perception, Simulation, TRI Research teams to define interfaces and requirements for an end-to-end stack, and to influence technical decisions across the partnership with Woven and TRI to drive innovation.
- Initiate, lead and mentor on ML best practices across teams.
Experience
- 7+ years of professional experience with machine learning applications or applied science
- MS or higher degree in CS/CE/EE, or equivalent industry experience
- Hands-on experience with recent breakthroughs in generative AI for robotics and/or autonomous driving, such as large e2e behavior models, foundation models, world models, multimodal transformer architectures, pre-training and efficient fine-tuning, LLMs and VLAs.
- Experience with ML frameworks such as PyTorch, Jax or Tensorflow (PyTorch preferred)
- Experience with temporal data and/or sequential modeling
- Familiarity with state-of-the-art architectures for object detection and 3D perception
- Python and C++ experience
- Hands-on experience with large scale distributed training
- Experience in ML workflows: data sampling and curation, pre-processing, model training, ablation studies, evaluation, deployment, inference optimization
- Knowledge of debugging and profiling deep neural networks on NVIDIA CUDA stack
Nice to Have
- Published research at top-tier conferences (NeurIPs, CVPR and similar)
- Hands-on experience with building a perception stack for autonomous systems (e.g.multi-view geometry, camera calibration, depth estimation, neural radiance fields, gaussian splatting, simultaneous localization and mapping)
- Experience with PyTorch and Computer Vision for sensor fusion (e.g. BEV representations)
- Experience with model deployment with NVIDIA stack (e.g. ONNX graphs, TensorRT, profiling)
- Experience with infrastructure for large scale temporal datasets
For positions based in Palo Alto, CA, the base pay for this position ranges from $161,000- $264,500 a year.
Your base salary is one part of your total compensation. We offer a base salary, short term and long term incentives, and a comprehensive benefits package. The total compensation offered to an employee will be dependent upon the individual's skills, experience, qualifications, location, and level.
WHAT WE OFFER
We are committed to creating a modern work environment that supports our employees and their loved ones. We offer many options of the best programs to allow you to do your most meaningful work and to help you shape the future of mobility.
・Excellent health, wellness, dental and vision coverage
・A rewarding 401k program
・Flexible vacation policy
・Family planning and care benefits
Our Commitment
・We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity.
・Any information we receive from you will be used only in the hiring and onboarding process. Please see our privacy notice for more details.
Top Skills
C++
Jax
Nvidia Cuda
Python
PyTorch
TensorFlow
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The Company
What We Do
Woven by Toyota will help to deliver the safest, most intelligent mobility experiences and lifestyle for Toyota customers everywhere. At Woven by Toyota, we envision a human-centered future, where world-class technology expands global access to mobility, enhances the capabilities of drivers, and empowers people to thrive. We achieve this with a unique global culture that weaves modern Silicon Valley innovation with Japanese quality craftsmanship. As society, technology and customer needs evolve, we continuously pursue new ways to create a more personal, seamless experience for customers.
