Research Scientist, World Models

The role

You will develop algorithms and productionize next-generation world models for Waabi's autonomous-driving simulation, Waabi World. The work covers video, multimodal, LLM/VLM/VLA and predictive models of traffic and scenes.

What you will do

• Conduct fundamental and applied research in generative and predictive world modeling
• Develop video generation and prediction models, including latent diffusion, autoregressive and flow-matching models
• Build multimodal foundation models for driving scenes
• Apply LLM, VLM and VLA methods for scene understanding, reasoning and control
• Develop generative scenario modeling and controllable simulation
• Work on model distillation
• Collaborate with engineers to integrate models into large-scale distributed training and rendering pipelines
• Publish research at top conferences such as CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, ICRA and SIGGRAPH
• Mentor junior scientists and interns
• Keep up with advances in generative AI, differentiable rendering, distillation/compression and robotics

Required qualifications

• Ph.D. in Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Robotics or a related field, or equivalent research experience
• Expert-level Python and PyTorch (or JAX) skills
• Strong software-engineering fundamentals and experience with distributed training
• Experience building generative or predictive models of the physical world with scale and efficiency in mind
• Experience working in a close-knit team of researchers and engineers with strong communication

Nice to have

• Experience translating research into production-quality code and measurable product impact
• First-author publications in top-tier venues on world models, generative simulation, video prediction, diffusion, flow-matching or foundation models for autonomy

Benefits

• Competitive compensation and equity awards
• Medical, dental and vision coverage (full-time employees)
• Unlimited vacation
• Flexible hours and work-from-home support
• Daily drinks, snacks and catered meals when in office
• Regular team building activities and social events on-site, off-site and virtually

Before you apply

• Equal opportunity employer; accommodations are available for the application and interview process on request

About the company

Waabi, founded by Raquel Urtasun, is a Physical AI company building autonomous transportation, including commercial autonomous trucks and robotaxis. It has offices in Toronto, San Francisco, Dallas and Pittsburgh.