Toyota Research Institute · 2 months ago
Research Scientist, Latent State Inference for World Models
Los Altos, CA
Full-time
Hybrid
Senior Level
$176K/yr - $264K/yrToyota Research Institute (TRI) is focused on improving the quality of human life through innovative technologies. They are seeking a forward-thinking Research Scientist to develop scalable, human-like driving intelligence by inferring latent state representations from sensor data and supporting policy evaluation for autonomous vehicles.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)AutomotiveConsumer ResearchMachine LearningProduct Research
Responsibilities
Design and train learning-based systems that transform raw multimodal sensor data (e.g., images, lidar, radar) into compact, dynamic latent states suitable for use in learned world models
Investigate unsupervised, self-supervised, and contrastive methods to learn latent spaces that encode dynamics, semantics, and uncertainty
Incorporate temporal information and motion consistency into latent state estimation using recurrent, filtering, or transformer-based architectures
Combine data from heterogeneous modalities into a unified latent state representations that generalize across conditions and scenarios
Ensure the learned representations are resilient to occlusion, sensor degradation, and distributional shift
Collaborate on joint research agendas with world modeling and policy evaluation researchers to explore uncertainty modeling, interpretability, and representation bottlenecks
Publish novel research, contribute to open-source tools, and engage with the academic community at major ML and robotics conferences
Qualification
Required
PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related field
Strong foundation in representation learning or state estimation for sequential decision-making
Robust experience in deep generative models (e.g., VAEs, diffusion models, autoregressive models)
Solid base in perception models from large-scale real-world sensor datasets from autonomous driving, robotics, or similar domains
Experience with latent world models, generative AI for perception, or contrastive learning
Familiarity with structure-from-motion, Gaussian splatting, or neural radiance fields (NeRFs)
Experience with multi-modal sensor fusion, state estimation, and SLAM techniques
Familiarity with uncertainty-aware perception, active perception, and predictive modeling
Accomplished publication record at top-tier conferences such as NeurIPS, CVPR, ICCV, ICLR, ICRA, CoRL, or RSS
Deep programming skills in Python and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX
Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to work in a fast-paced team research environment
Preferred
Background building or using world models in model-based RL, planning, or simulation
Familiarity with latent-space rollouts, policy evaluation metrics, or offline RL tools
Knowledge working in high-dimensional, real-time environments with latency constraints
Benefits
401(k) eligibility
Various paid time off benefits, such as vacation, sick time, and parental leave
Annual cash bonus structure
Company
Toyota Research Institute
Toyota Research Institute is an R&D enterprise with an initial focus on artificial intelligence and robotics.
Founded in 2016
201-500 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Toyota Research Institute has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (10)
2020 (7)
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageLeadership Team
Gill Pratt
CEO
Phillip Zackler
Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel
Recent News
2025-12-18
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