2026 Summer Intern – PhD – Research Engineering Intern, Generative Simulation Validation

Job description

Mission Summary: The Behavior Understanding and Evaluation team at Motional is responsible for defining how we measure and validate autonomous vehicle behavior at scale. To prepare for large-scale driverless deployment, manual review and static metrics thresholds are no longer sufficient. We aim to build automated, statistically rigorous systems using cutting-edge machine learning techniques to understand and evaluate our vehicles' performance, both in real-world deployment and within simulated environments. Determining whether a simulation "Passed" or "Failed" is a particular challenge given the multi-modal complexity of real-world human driving.This is a research-forward engineering role focused on helping us build a Next-Generation Semantic Validator: a production-grade machine learning evaluation system that learns the distribution of valid human driving behavior and uses it as a "Safety Ruler" for autonomous vehicle releases. This internship is based in our Boston office and requires in-office days each week. What you’ll do: - Develop Advanced Models: Leverage Transformer-based Generative Models (e.g., Trajectory Transformers or MotionLM architectures) to learn the 'grammar' o...