Hiring: Senior/Staff Research Engineer — Vision-Language-Action Models (Autonomous Driving) Company: PlusAI Location: Santa Clara, CA Job Posted Time: 2026-09-15 21:02:18 Target Skills & Keywords : AI, Deep Learning, Make, ONNX, PATs, PyTorch, TensorFlow, TensorRT, Transformers About the job Experience: •3+ years implementing and training models in a deep learning framework (PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX). Required Skills: •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. •Collaborate with perception, planning, and platform teams to bring models from research to production 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. Compensation: •$170,000-$260,00k •Exact Compensation May Vary Based On Skills And Experience. •$170,000 - $260,000 a year •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. •We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace hum Interested candidates, please apply directly through the job posting on company's career page or try via AI auto apply on this platform. Don't miss this opportunity to join a forward-thinking team!