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Aurora Innovation Logo Aurora Innovation · IT - Software Development

Applied Researcher

United States, Mountain View · Job Posted May 29, 2026
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Job Description

Aurora’s mission is to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly. The Aurora Driver will create a new era in mobility and logistics, one that will bring a safer, more efficient, and more accessible future to everyone. At Aurora, you will tackle massively complex problems alongside other passionate, intelligent individuals, growing as an expert while expanding your knowledge. We’re searching for a a PhD to serve as our technical pathfinder in the realm of Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models.

Job Responsibility

  • Architectural Exploration: Deep dive into VLM/VLA architectures to determine their viability for our specific problem sets
  • Technical Mentorship: Act as the subject matter expert and guide for an exceptionally capable engineering team eager to move into this space
  • Practical Implementation: Bridge the gap between high-level academic theory and practical, scalable applications
  • Innovation: Redesign and optimize model architectures to leverage high-performance computing environments like Aurora

Requirements

  • PhD Graduate in AI, Computer Science, or Robotics (Top-tier research lab background)
  • Deep expertise in Vision-Language Models (VLM) and Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models
  • Hands-on experience with 'jagged edges'
  • Practical researcher: Ability to translate complex papers into production-ready code
  • Collaborative Guide: Willingness to mentor existing team members and bridge the knowledge gap
  • Excitement for large-scale infrastructure and supercomputing environments (e.g., Aurora)
  • Architectural Creativity: Ability to rethink and redo entire model architectures rather than just fine-tuning
  • Strong programming skills in Python
  • Preference for a strong depth programming in modern C++
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