Senior AI Engineer - Multi-year CONTRACT ROLE (This position is not eligible for employment visa sponsorship)

DescriptionVW. Two letters. Endless opportunities. A bright future.Innovation. Sophistication. Optimization. This is our Passion.Worldwide, the Volkswagen Group has a long tradition of dramatic innovations. The Volkswagen Group with its headquarters in Wolfsburg is one of the world’s leading automobile manufacturers and the largest carmaker in Europe. The Group comprises twelve brands from seven European countries: Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Audi, SEAT, ŠKODA, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, Ducati, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Scania and MAN. Here in the US, we are blending German engineering with American ingenuity.At the Innovation & Engineering Center California (IECC), we represent the Volkswagen Group in applied research and development. Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, we create bold new ideas for the Volkswagen, Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, Bugatti and Porsche brands. We’re a team of engineers, designers, scientists, and psychologists looking to develop innovations for future generations of cars, and to transfer technologies from many industries and research institutions into the automotive domain. Our mission is to drive change which means we are not only impacting one of the world’s largest car makers, but also the lives of millions of people. Are you ready to join us?Senior AI Engineer (Hybrid role requires 3 days/week onsite)(This position is not eligible for initial employment visa sponsorship)Role SummaryThis role will be tasked with applying machine learning/deep learning to the automotive industry. Applications could include autonomous driving, manufacturing, design etc. This is more than a purely academic role – you will likely need to integrate the modules you build into real cars and also think about questions around testability and proving safety. Working in our facility requires a high level of independence and an ability to deal with lots of ambiguity. The incumbent will not be given clear cut projects – instead this individual and subsequent team will be responsible for coming up with the “next big thing” that nobody has thought of as yet, building it and selling it.This position should be held by a Computer Science Engineer, or equivalent, with experience in the development of Software and Software architectures.Role ResponsibilitiesMachine Learning Development•         Maintains, as well as furthers, enhances existing machine learning modules for autonomous vehicles.•         Designs and implements new machine learning based approaches based on existing frameworks.•         Keeps up to speed with the state of the art of academic research and technology in the industry.•         Coordinates with engineers at the ICC and in Germany on the development of autonomous driving           software.•         Transfers technologies and solutions to Volkswagen Group development divisions.Process Documentation and Representation•         Develops technical specifications and documentation.•         Represents Volkswagen Group in the technical community, such as at conferences.QualificationsQualifications·      5 - 7 years of professional experience (post-graduate) preferred·       5+ years’ Deep LearningEducationRequired·       Master’s Degree in Computer Science or equivalent.Desired·       PhD Strongly Preferred.Skills·       Strong knowledge of different machine learning algorithms.Specialized SkillsRequired·Background in Deep Neural Network Learning, Computer Vision and Machine Learning.·       Strong programming skills with Python and TensorFlow/Pytorch on on-prem compute and public clouds (e.g. AWS).·       Knowledge of generating features from sensor technology like camera, lidar, radar, GPS/ D-GPS and HD maps.  Experience with data gathering, data quality, system architecture, coding best practices.·       Take initiative to launch projects with the ability to quickly learn and develop own ideas in an interdisciplinary environment. ·Extracting high level logical structure from low level, multi-dimensional data.·       Experience with CNNs, GANs, Diffusion Models, VAE, Transformers, Reinforcement/Imitation Learning.  Specification/Documentation of interfaces between software modules.  Significant amount of published research articles.Desired ·       Familiarity with Large/Visual Language Modeling.·       Graphical Models.·       Prompt tuning·       Object Detection, NLP, Scene Understanding.·       Background or strong interest in automotive Engineering·       Experience with C++, CUDA, OpenCV and GPU programming.·       Big Data and cloud experience strongly preferred.·       Experience with cameras, LIDAR, IMU, GPS, other sensing modalities.·       Experience in a regulated industry – automotive, aeronautics, medical devices etc.·       Passion for cars or physical products.Work Flexibility·       Travel is estimated to be 5-10%, as needed within U.S. and overseas.In Belmont, California, the salary range for this role is $128400 -$190000, depending on education and experience.