Senior ML Research Scientist, Perception Foundation Encoder

Who We Are

Nuro is a self-driving technology company on a mission to make autonomy accessible to all. Founded in 2016, Nuro is building the world’s most scalable driver, combining cutting-edge AI with automotive-grade hardware. Nuro licenses its core technology, the Nuro Driver™, to support a wide range of applications, from robotaxis and commercial fleets to personally owned vehicles. With technology proven over years of self-driving deployments, Nuro gives the automakers and mobility platforms a clear path to AVs at commercial scale—empowering a safer, richer, and more connected future.

About the Role

As part of Nuro's Perception team, you will help define the Perception architecture of Nuro Driver for years to come. The Perception Foundation Encoder is the very first stage of processing in our stack, and it's responsible for compressing raw sensor data (cameras, lidar, radar, and audio) into a unified feature representation. You'll be part of the team that develops the training techniques for obtaining such a foundational encoder.

Your work directly impacts a large number of critical functionalities — object detection and tracking, online mapping, unusual scene understanding, and learned behavior. You will apply your deep understanding and experience in state-of-the-art machine learning to achieve a fine balance between model performance, onboard latency, and maintenance complexity.

About You

Solving such a complex problem requires a diverse skillset, including the following:

• Ph.D. level research experience in some of the following areas: multi-modal models, large multi-task vision models, large scale model training, and model distillation.
• 3+ years working deeply on an ML project with material contributions.
• Strong SWE fundamentals and has demonstrated SWE experience in both high and low-level languages (Python and C++)
• Publications at some of the major conferences (e.g., CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CoRL, RSS, ICRA).
• Experience communicating clearly on complex technical topics across a range of stakeholders and leadership. 

At Nuro, we celebrate differences and are committed to a diverse workplace that fosters inclusion and psychological safety for all employees. Nuro is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and expressly prohibits any form of workplace discrimination based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristics.

At Nuro, your base pay is one part of your total compensation package. For this position, the reasonably expected pay range is between $193,930.00 and $291,150.00/year for the level at which this job has been scoped. Your base pay will depend on several factors, including your experience, qualifications, education, location, and skills. In the event that you are considered for a different level, a higher or lower pay range would apply. This position is also eligible for an annual performance bonus, equity, and a competitive benefits package.