Research Scientist, World Models

Research Scientist, World Models

Position Overview

Waabi is an AI company dedicated to building the next generation of self-driving technology. Founded by AI pioneer Raquel Urtasun, Waabi leverages a world-class team and an innovative approach to AI for safe autonomous driving, bringing the promise of self-driving closer to commercialization. Backed by top-tier investors, Waabi is rapidly expanding with offices in Toronto, San Francisco, and Dallas, seeking diverse, innovative, and collaborative individuals eager to make a positive global impact.

Waabi's autonomous-driving stack is powered by Waabi World, a simulation platform designed for realistic, scalable, controllable, and efficient simulation. As a Research Scientist in World Models, you will be instrumental in developing and productionizing next-generation World Simulation models capable of reasoning about complex, dynamic 4D environments with minimal supervision. Your contributions will directly enhance Waabi World's ability to understand the 4D physical world, simulate traffic participants, and generate safety-critical scenarios at scale.

Responsibilities

• Conduct fundamental and applied research in generative and predictive world-modeling techniques (e.g., latent diffusion, video generation models, 3D Gaussian splatting, NeRF) using multi-sensor, multi-modal data from driving scenes.
• Collaborate with simulation engineers to integrate developed models into large-scale, distributed training and rendering pipelines.
• Publish high-impact research findings at leading conferences such as CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, ICRA, and SIGGRAPH.
• Mentor junior scientists and interns, fostering a culture of scientific rigor and rapid experimentation.
• Stay abreast of the latest advancements in generative AI, differentiable rendering, knowledge distillation/compression, and robotics.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated Technical Innovation: Ph.D. in Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related field, or equivalent research experience pushing the boundaries of a technical domain.
• Strong Prototyping and Implementation Skills: Expert-level proficiency in Python and PyTorch (or JAX), strong software engineering fundamentals, and experience with distributed training.
• Expert Domain Knowledge: Proven experience building generative or predictive models of the physical world with a focus on scale and efficiency for real-world applications.
• Team Player: Experience working collaboratively within a close-knit team of researchers and engineers, with strong communication skills to drive successful project outcomes.

Bonus Qualifications

• Proven ability to translate research into production-quality code and achieve measurable product impact.
• Demonstrated publications (first-author) in top-tier venues on topics including world models, generative simulation, video prediction, NeRF/3DGS, diffusion, flow-matching, or foundation models for autonomy.

Employment Type

Full-time

Salary and Benefits

• US Yearly Salary Range: $155,000 - $269,000 USD
• Additional Compensation: Competitive equity incentive awards and an annual performance bonus.
• Health and Wellness: Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage for full-time employees.
• Work-Life Balance: Unlimited Vacation, Flexible hours, and Work From Home support.
• Office Perks: Daily drinks, snacks, and catered meals (when in office).
• Team Engagement: Regularly scheduled team-building activities and social events (on-site, off-site, and virtual).
• Note: Perks and benefits are subject to evolution as the company grows.

Company Information

Waabi is an AI company building the next generation of self-driving technology. Founded by AI pioneer and visionary Raquel Urtasun, Waabi is backed by best-in-class investors across the technology, logistics, and Canadian innovation ecosystems. With offices in Toronto, San Francisco, and Dallas, Waabi is growing quickly and looking for diverse, innovative, and collaborative candidates who want to impact the world in a positive way.

Learn more at: www.waabi.ai

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