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World Model Research Scientist- Physical AI

Kodiak AI· AI & Machine Learning
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Mountain View, CA$190k - $250kfull-timePosted 6mo ago

About the role

Research scientist leading design and development of world models that generate multi-sensor, multi-view, temporally coherent driving scenarios conditioned on actions, 3D scene context, and text for autonomous driving applications.

Responsibilities

  • Design and train generative world models that synthesize realistic multi-camera video and LiDAR conditioned on ego trajectories, 3D scene context, and text
  • Research and implement conditional diffusion architectures for driving, including spatiotemporal attention, latent space design, and action-conditioned generation
  • Develop techniques for multi-view geometric consistency in generated outputs, drawing on neural rendering, cross-view attention, and 3D-aware generative approaches
  • Build methods for joint multimodal generation that maintain cross-sensor consistency between camera, LiDAR, and radar outputs
  • Design evaluation frameworks that measure world model quality beyond pixel-level metrics, including scenario fidelity and autoregressive stability
  • Scale training pipelines to learn from thousands of hours of real-world driving data across multiple sensor modalities

Qualifications

  • PhD in Computer Science, AI, Robotics, or a related field, with a focus on generative modeling, neural rendering, or video synthesis
  • Strong publication record or demonstrated research contributions in diffusion models, video generation, neural radiance fields, 3D-aware generative models, or world models
  • Experience with neural rendering and view synthesis and an understanding of multi-view geometric consistency
  • Proficiency working with multimodal sensor data (camera, LiDAR, radar) and familiarity with 3D representations such as BEV grids, voxel fields, or tri-planes
  • Strong implementation skills in Python and PyTorch, with experience training large generative models at scale using distributed training
  • Passion for building AI that understands and predicts the physical world to enable safe autonomous driving

Skills

Required:PhD-level expertise in generative modelingDiffusion models and video generationNeural rendering / view synthesisMultimodal sensor data (camera, LiDAR, radar)Python and PyTorch

Benefits

  • Competitive compensation package including equity and annual bonuses
  • Medical, Dental, and Vision plans
  • MetLife Legal Services, Identity & Fraud Protection, Hospital Indemnity Insurance, Accident Insurance, & Critical Illness Insurance
  • Flexible PTO, 10 paid holidays, and generous parental leave policies
  • Dog-friendly office with free catered lunch, fully stocked kitchen, and free EV charging
  • Long Term Disability, Short Term Disability, Life Insurance
  • Wellbeing Benefits (Headspace, Calm, One Medical, Gympass, Spring Health, Rula)
  • Fidelity 401(k)
  • Commuter, FSA, Dependent Care FSA, HSA
  • Various incentive programs (referral bonuses, patent bonuses)
Last updated Oct 21, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Kodiak AI

Safely driving an autonomous future.

Our purpose-built autonomous solution, the Kodiak Driver, is the AV industry’s most advanced driverless technology, seamlessly integrating into any driving platform for reliable movement in any environment. Learn how we’re shaping the future of ground transportation.

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