Motional · 1 week ago
2026 Summer Intern – PhD – Research Engineering Intern, Generative Simulation Validation
Boston, MA
Internship
Onsite
Intern
Start in 2026 SummerMotional is a driverless technology company making autonomous vehicles a safe, reliable, and accessible reality. The Research Engineering Intern will focus on building a Next-Generation Semantic Validator for evaluating autonomous vehicle performance using advanced machine learning techniques.
TransportationSoftwareAutomotiveLogisticsInformation TechnologyAutonomous VehiclesFleet Management
Responsibilities
Develop Advanced Models: Leverage Transformer-based Generative Models (e.g., Trajectory Transformers or MotionLM architectures) to learn the 'grammar' of valid human driving knowing ground truth of the past and future, allowing rapid assessment of large scale simulations that may otherwise require a human in the loop
Establish Statistical Safety Guarantees: Pioneer the definition and implementation of key evaluation metrics using techniques such as Conformal Prediction to establish rigorous, dynamic safety envelopes around predicted trajectories
Benchmark Methods: Own the benchmarking initiative comparing traditional geometric methods (e.g., single trajectory comparison) against cutting-edge generative / ML based approaches to prove a reduction in "False Fails."
Collaborate: Partner cross-functionally with Behaviors, Actions, Simulation, System Engineering, and Research to share insights on multi-modal truth and probabilistic safety
Qualification
Required
Currently a PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a related field
Strong foundation in scientific and statistical methodologies
Expertise in Machine Learning and Deep Learning, specifically modern Sequence Modeling (Transformers, Self-Attention, and Cross-Attention applied to time-series or trajectory data)
Hands-on experience with Generative AI paradigms (e.g., treating motion as a generative next-token prediction task, or using Diffusion Models)
Strong grasp of Probabilistic ML and uncertainty quantification to distinguish between 'rare but safe' behaviors and out-of-distribution failures
Strong software engineering skills in Python and standard deep learning frameworks (PyTorch or TensorFlow)
Preferred
Domain knowledge in Autonomous Vehicles, specifically Motion Planning, Kinematics, or Behavior Prediction
Familiarity with Conformal Prediction or other distribution-free uncertainty quantification techniques
Experience with Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) or inferring intent from human driving
Experience with JAX / Flax and composable function transformations (jit, vmap) for high-performance computing
Company
Motional
Motional offers an autonomous driving platform for robotaxi providers, fleet operators, and automotive manufacturers.
Founded in 2020
1001-5000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Motional 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 (56)
2024 (111)
2023 (57)
2022 (110)
2021 (100)
2020 (7)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
unknown2024-05-03Acquired
2024-03-15Seed
Leadership Team
Laura Major
President and CEO
Balajee Kannan
Vice President, Autonomy
Recent News
Clean Technica
2026-01-17
2026-01-16
Boston Globe
2026-01-16
Company data provided by crunchbase