Part Time Student Worker – Performance Optimization & Agentic Systems

Zoox • San Diego, CA

2d • Onsite

About The Position

Zoox is transforming mobility with fully autonomous, electric vehicles designed from the ground up for a driverless future. Our mission is to make transportation safer, more sustainable, and accessible to everyone. At Zoox, innovation, collaboration, and a bold vision for the future drive everything we do.
About Our Part Time Student Worker Program
Zoox’s program offers hands-on experience with cutting-edge technology, mentorship from some of the industry’s brightest minds, and the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to real projects. We seek part time student workers who demonstrate strong academic performance, engagement beyond the classroom, intellectual curiosity, and a genuine interest in Zoox’s mission.
Project Overview
Zoox is seeking a highly detail-oriented and methodical student contractor to join our platform architecture team. The primary focus of this role is to design and execute rigorous performance optimization experiments for software processes running on high-performance CPU/GPU platforms (NVIDIA).

You will work at the intersection of traditional hardware-aware optimization and cutting-edge agentic systems, using tools like Claude to develop LLM-based agents that can assist in the optimization lifecycle

Requirements

• Strong Mathematical Foundation: Demonstrated proficiency in Linear Algebra, Control Theory, or Stochastic Optimization to model autonomy and performance bottlenecks
• Hardware-Aware Optimization: A deep academic or project-based understanding of computer architecture (NVIDIA platforms) to optimize for memory bandwidth and high-throughput TFLOPS
• Agentic Systems & Analysis: Experience experimenting with LLM-based agents and a disciplined approach to systems profiling and software engineering
• Operational Style: You must be exceptionally detail-oriented and careful in your execution, prioritizing accuracy and deep-dive analysis over speed
• Currently pursuing a B.S. or M.S., in a relevant engineering field
• Available for a 6 month project
• Able to commit to at least 20 hours per week
• Ability to commute on-site to one of our offices
• Student Worker may not use proprietary Zoox information in university theses, publications, or share it outside

Responsibilities

• Ensure that experiments are reproducible, profiling data is meticulously captured, and edge cases are thoroughly investigated
• Thrive on precision

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Part-time
• Career Level: Intern
• Number of Employees: 501-1,000 employees