Contract Student Worker Automation & Behavioral Science Engineer

Team: Software Platforms and Product

Location: Foster City, CA

Commitment: Contract

Workplace Type: hybrid

Project Overview

Zoox is seeking a motivated (graduate or upper-level undergraduate) student worker to join our team, focusing on (building and validating a driving risk assessment system, an experimental RAG system for proactively testing autonomous-vehicle behavior)
In this role, you will:
Design, build, and iterate on an end-to-end RAG pipeline for autonomy validation, owning it from prototype to demo
Define and run empirical experiments that "show it with data" rather than relying on assumptions
Work through ambiguous, open-ended problems with a researcher's mindset and a bias toward rapid iteration
Communicate complex results, trade-offs, and uncertainty clearly to the team and stakeholders

Qualifications

Currently pursuing a B.S. or M.S. in a relevant quantitative field (Engineering, CS, Physics, Neuroscience, Biology/Computational Bio, or similar)
Strong programming skills in Python
Solid data manipulation understanding (e.g., SQL, Pyspark, Scala)
Solid foundation in machine learning and statistics
Comfort operating independently under high uncertainty on open-ended problems
Excellent written and verbal communication; able to convey complexity and ambiguity clearly
Strong teamwork and collaboration skills

Bonus Qualifications

Experience with RAG systems, LLMs, or vision-language models (VLMs)
Background in a quantitative discipline (Neuroscience, Physics, Computational Bio, etc.) 
Prior research experience taking ambiguous, end-to-end problems from zero to a result, independently
Genuine interest in autonomous vehicles and Zoox's mission

Program Requirements

Currently pursuing a B.S. or M.S., in a relevant engineering field.
Available for a 6 month project
Able to commit to at least 40 hours per week
Ability to commute on-site to Foster City
Student Worker may not use proprietary Zoox information in university theses, publications, or share it outside.