2026 Summer Intern – AI/ML Intern – Vision Language Model/Action (Masters)

Job Description

To help facilitate administration of relocation benefits if you are selected, please apply using the permanent address you would move from.  

Work Arrangement:  
Hybrid: This internship is categorized as hybrid. The selected intern is expected to report to the office up to three times per week or as determined by the team.  

Locations:   

San Francisco, California  

Sunnyvale, California   

Mountain View, California   

About the Team:  

The AI Research organization is dedicated to advancing the state-of-the-art in AI for autonomous vehicles. We are a collaborative, forward-thinking group of researchers and engineers tackling some of the most complex challenges in autonomy and machine learning.  

About the Role:  
As a VLM/VLA Research Intern on the AI Research team, you will operate at the frontier of Embodied AI, developing foundational models that bridge the gap between high-level reasoning and physical execution. Your work will focus on advancing vision-language-action architectures to solve critical challenges in data mining and end-to-end autonomous driving. This role offers a unique opportunity to work on real-world AI/ML systems at scale, collaborating with and receiving mentorship from world-class researchers to shape the future of grounded foundation models in the autonomous vehicle industry. 

What You’ll Do:   

• Drive the development of embodied foundation models and vision-language-action architectures that unify multimodal perception with robotic control. 

• Prototype and refine ML models that leverage VLA architectures to improve decision-making and reasoning for autonomous vehicles through imitation and reinforcement learning. 

• Utilize vision-language models and generative techniques (such as world models) to improve the model's understanding of complex driving scenarios. 

• Partner with perception, robotics, and systems engineering teams to integrate VLA research into the broader autonomous stack and validate models in closed-loop environments. 

• Engage in high-level technical brainstorming, share insights across the AI Research org, and contribute to the academic community through top-tier conference publications. 

Required Qualifications:   

• Currently pursuing or in the process of obtaining a Masters in Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, or a related technical field.  

• Solid understanding of modern machine learning techniques, especially deep learning architectures (e.g., transformers, LLMs, VLMs, generative models, multimodal learning).  

• Proficiency in Python and ML frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.  

• Research experience in AI/ML, demonstrated through coursework, academic projects, or publications.  

• Strong problem-solving skills and a collaborative mindset.  

• Strong communication and presentation skills.  

• Experience working and communicating cross functionally in a team environment.  

• Able to work fulltime, 40 hours per week  

Preferred Qualifications:  

• Familiarity with autonomous vehicles or advanced driver assista