PhD Research Intern, Object Detection and Tracking

Zoox • Foster City, CA

6h • 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. Zoox’s internship 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 interns who demonstrate strong academic performance, engagement beyond the classroom, intellectual curiosity, and a genuine interest in Zoox’s mission. Interns on this team will have the opportunity to develop state-of-the-art agent policies at the forefront of autonomy research, while contributing to work with strong potential for publication. You’ll partner closely with experienced researchers to tackle a high-impact, open research problem that is directly relevant to the team’s roadmap. This role offers a rare combination of deep research and real-world impact—with a clear path for your work to transition from novel ideas into production systems within the simulation stack that validates Zoox’s autonomous driving software. Zoox is developing the first ground-up, fully autonomous vehicle fleet and the supporting ecosystem required to bring this technology to market. Sitting at the intersection of robotics, machine learning, and design, Zoox aims to provide the next generation of mobility-as-a-service in urban environments. We’re looking for top talent that shares our passion and wants to be part of a fast-moving and highly execution-oriented team.

Requirements

• Strong python programming and data engineering skills
• Well-versed in PyTorch or other learning framework
• Experience in detection, tracking, or prediction models
• Experience with complex code bases
• Currently working towards a Ph.D in Computer Science, Electrical/Computer Engineering, or related field, with the specialization in the CV/NLP/ML
• Good academic standing
• Able to commit to a 12-week internship during one of the following summer 2026 cohorts: May 18th - August 7th, OR May 26th - August 14th, OR June 15th - September 4th
• At least one previous industry internship, co-op, or project completed in a relevant area
• Ability to relocate to the Bay Area, California (or Boston, Massachusetts) for the duration of the internship
• Interns at Zoox may not use any proprietary information they are working on as part of their thesis, any published work with their university, or to be distributed to anyone outside of Zoox

Nice To Haves

• Publication records in top-tier AI conferences (CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, etc)
• Experience with large-scale data sets for ML training

Responsibilities

• Develop state-of-the-art agent policies at the forefront of autonomy research
• Contribute to work with strong potential for publication
• Partner closely with experienced researchers to tackle a high-impact, open research problem that is directly relevant to the team’s roadmap
• Transition your work from novel ideas into production systems within the simulation stack that validates Zoox’s autonomous driving software

Benefits

• monthly salary for this position is $9,500
• medical insurance
• housing stipend
• relocation assistance

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Intern
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree
• Number of Employees: 501-1,000 employees