World Model Research Scientist — Physical AI

Job overview

The World Model Research Scientist — Physical AI role is onsite in Mountain View, CA. Compensation is $190,000–$250,000 per year in the California pay range. Kodiak develops autonomous trucking technology, and this role advances the world models used to train, validate, and support autonomous trucks. The scientist designs generative models that predict physically consistent driving scenarios from real-world sensor data. This work supports scalable closed-loop training, validation, and scenario generation, with model capabilities distilled into onboard autonomous-driving systems.

What you'll do

• Design and train generative world models for multi-camera video and LiDAR
• implement conditional diffusion architectures
• develop multi-view geometric consistency methods
• build joint multimodal generation across camera, LiDAR, and radar
• create evaluation frameworks for scenario fidelity and autoregressive stability
• scale training pipelines using real-world multimodal driving data.

What we're looking for

Skills & competencies

world model research scientist

physical ai

mountain view ca

kodiak

full-time

onsite

generative models

diffusion models

autonomous driving

multimodal sensors

pytorch

$190k-$250k

Work arrangement

• Weekend coverage required

Benefits & perks

• Medical, dental, and vision plans
• legal and identity protection services
• flexible PTO
• paid holidays
• parental leave
• disability and life insurance
• 401(k)
• commuter, FSA, dependent care FSA, and HSA options
• wellbeing benefits
• office perks.

Why this role

Requires a PhD in computer science, AI, robotics, or a related field focused on generative modeling, neural rendering, or video synthesis, plus research contributions and experience with multimodal sensor data and large-scale distributed training.

About the employer

Kodiak is hiring for this role. Industry: Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except Nanotechnology and Biotechnology). Sector: 54.