Research Scientist, World Models

Job Description

Job Description

Waabi, founded by AI visionary Raquel Urtasun, is the leader in Physical AI. With a world-class team, we're unlocking the next era of autonomous transportation with technology that's powering commercial autonomous trucks and robotaxis. Waabi is backed by and partners with world leaders in AI, automotive, logistics, and deep tech.

With offices in Toronto, San Francisco, Dallas, and Pittsburgh, Waabi is growing quickly and looking for diverse, innovative and collaborative candidates who want to impact the world in a positive way. To learn more visit:

Waabi’s autonomous-driving stack is powered by Waabi World, which aims to deliver realistic, scalable, controllable, and efficient simulation. As a Research Scientist in World Models, you will develop algorithms and productionize the next generation of World Models that can reason about complex, dynamic 4D environments.

This role focuses on large-scale world models for temporal reasoning and generation, including video models, multimodal generative models, LLM/VLM/VLA models, and predictive models of traffic participants and scenes. Your work will directly power Waabi World’s ability to model future evolution, synthesize realistic safety-critical scenarios, and provide rich generative priors for downstream planning, testing, and training.

You will…

- Conduct fundamental and applied research in generative and predictive world-modeling

• Video generation and prediction.

• Latent diffusion / autoregressive / flow-matching models.

• Multimodal foundation models for driving scenes.

• LLM / VLM / VLA methods for scene understanding, reasoning, and control.

• Generative scenario modeling and controllable simulation.

• Model distillation.

- Collaborate with engineers to integrate models into large-scale, distributed training and rendering pipelines.

- Publish high-impact research at top conferences (CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, ICRA, SIGGRAPH).

- Mentor junior scientists and interns; foster a culture of scientific rigor and rapid experimentation.

- Stay on top of emerging advances in generative AI, differentiable rendering, knowledge distillation/compression, and robotics.

Qualifications:

- Demonstrated technical innovation: You have a Ph.D. in Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related field or equivalent research experience pushing the boundaries of a technical field..

- Strong prototyping and implementation: You have expert-level Python & PyTorch (or JAX) skills; strong software-engineering fundamentals and experience with distributed training.

- Expert domain knowledge: You have built generative or predictive models of the physical world with scale and efficiency in mind for real-world applications

- Team player: You have worked in a close-knit team of researchers and engineers and have strong communication to deliver successful projects. 

Bonus:

- Proven ability to translate research into production-quality code and measurable product impact.

- Demonstrated publications (first-author) in top-tier venues on topics such as world models, generative simulation, video prediction, diffusion, flow-matching, or foundation models for autonomy.

The US yearly salary range for this role is: $155,000 - $269,000 USD in addition to competitive perks & benefits. Waabi US Inc.’s yearly salary ranges are determined based on several factors in accordance with the Company’s compensation practices. The salary base range is reflective of the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations. Note: The Company provides additional compensation for employees in this role, including equity incentive awards and an annual performance bonus.

Perks/Benefits:

- Competitive compensation and equity awards.

- Health and Wellness benefits encompassing Medical, Dental and Vision coverage (for full-time employees only).

- Unlimited Vacation.

- Flexible hours and Work from Home support.

- Daily drinks, snacks and catered meals (when in office).

- Regularly scheduled team building activities and social events both on-site, off-site & virtually.

- As we grow, this list continues to evolve!

Waabi is a technology start-up building technologies to transform the way the world moves. Join our talented team to be a part of the future and to make an impact!

Waabi is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating a supportive, inclusive, and accessible workplace for all our employees. We seek applicants of all backgrounds and identities, across race, color, ethnicity, national origin or ancestry, age, citizenship, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, military or veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or parental status, caregiver status, disability, or any other characteristic protected by law. We make workplace accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities as required by applicable law. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process please let our recruiting team know.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.