Senior / Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Behavior Models for Road Users

Zoox is hiring a Senior / Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Behavior Models for Road Users in Foster City, United States. It pays $254k-$366k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Zoox.

Level's read on this job

On Level's scale, this machine learning engineer role is Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
Pay on this posting starts 28% higher than the typical machine learning engineer posting on Level.
The posting mentions JAX among its tools and skills.
Level classes it as a lead role.
Zoox has 228 other open roles on Level.

AI in this role

JAX

This role in the Offline Driving Intelligence team is responsible for developing/learning behavior models for road users such as cars, bicycles, and pedestrians. These agents populate Zoox's simulations and must be indistinguishable from real road users, yet fully controllable: promptable into the rare, adversarial, safety-critical behaviors we need to test against. This means the team’s models directly impact how fast Zoox can train, validate and ship its driving stack. Our team collaborates closely with Planner, Simulation and Validation teams to develop and validate our driving performance. As an ML Agents Machine Learning Engineer, you will work on the bleeding edge of the industry, developing novel machine learning pipelines and models to predict the behavior of other agents in the world and planning the best course of action for the ego vehicle.

In this role, you will...

Develop new deep learning models that use imitation learning and reinforcement learning to generate driving plans for human-like driving agents.
Work on novel techniques to estimate the quality of those driving plans along the dimensions of safety, progress, comfort and realism.
Build generative behavior models (e.g. autoregressive, diffusion) that are conditionable on scenario intent — "cut off the ego vehicle," "jaywalk here" — for targeted stress-testing.
Leverage our compute, infrastructure and large corpus of data to push boundaries of the field.
Develop metrics and tools to analyze errors and understand improvements of our systems.
Collaborate with engineers on Perception, Planning, Simulation, and Validation to solve the overall Autonomous Driving problem.

Qualifications

PhD degree in computer science or related field and 4+ years of relevant professional experience or master's degree and 7+ years of relevant professional experience
Experience in one of the following: Planning, Prediction, Reinforcement Learning, Imitation Learning, generative modeling (diffusion, autoregressive models)
Experience with training and deploying transformer-based model architectures
Experience with production Machine Learning pipelines: dataset creation, training frameworks, metrics pipelines
Fluency in Python ML frameworks and a basic understanding of C++

Bonus Qualifications

Top tier publications (NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR)
Experience with JAX

There are three major components to compensation for this position: salary, Amazon Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), and Zoox Stock Appreciation Rights. A sign-on bonus may be offered as part of the compensation package. The listed range applies only to the base salary. Compensation will vary based on geographic location and level. Leveling, as well as positioning within a level, is determined by a range of factors, including, but not limited to, a candidate's relevant years of experience, domain knowledge, and interview performance. The salary range listed in this posting is representative of the range of levels Zoox is considering for this position. Zoox also offers a comprehensive package of benefits, including paid time off (e.g. sick leave, vacation, bereavement), unpaid time off, Zoox Stock Appreciation Rights, Amazon RSUs, health insurance, long-term care insurance, long-term and short-term disability insurance, and life insurance.

How we rate this

Senior / Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Behavior Models for Road Users at Zoox rates 98 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Key facts

Senior / Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Behavior Models for Road Users is an open job at Zoox.
Level rates this role AI Level 4 of 4: Builds AI.
The listed salary is $254k-$366k a year.
The role is based in Foster City, CA.
The job was posted on December 17, 2025.
Seniority: lead.
Applications are handled by Zoox. Apply on Zoox

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

JAX

Also common in machine learning engineer jobs at this level

PyTorch LLM TensorFlow AWS Generative AI Spark

Pay

This job starts at: $254k
Typical machine learning engineer job: $198k

This posting starts 28% above the typical machine learning engineer job. See machine learning engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

What's a project where you used JAX hands-on?
How would you decide a model or AI system is ready to ship?
Tell me about a time a model underperformed in production. How did you find out, and what did you change?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: JAX. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.

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