Software Engineer Intern, Perception Data

About Zoox

Zoox is transforming mobility with fully autonomous, electric vehicles designed from the ground up for a driverless future. Our mission is to make transportation safer, more sustainable, and accessible to everyone. At Zoox, innovation, collaboration, and a bold vision for the future drive everything we do.

About Our Internship Program

Zoox’s internship program offers hands-on experience with cutting-edge technology, mentorship from some of the industry’s brightest minds, and the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to real projects. We seek interns who demonstrate strong academic performance, engagement beyond the classroom, intellectual curiosity, and a genuine interest in Zoox’s mission.

Project Overview

This internship opportunity is within the Perception Data team, which focuses on tooling and pipelines around autonomous vehicle perception data -- specifically the systems that discover, curate, and deliver high-quality training data at scale. 

Interns on this team will have the chance to work on Zoox's configurable data mining framework that powers large-scale extraction of labeled and unlabeled data from autonomous vehicle logs. This includes building new mining strategies (run loading, sample selection, and storage stages), integrating ML-driven data curation (e.g., embedding-based search, vision-language model filtering), scaling pipelines across distributed compute, and improving the developer experience around mining configuration and observability. Interns will gain valuable experience and insight into how targeted, high-quality training data is mined from petabyte-scale autonomous driving logs to improve the perception models that enable safe self-driving.

Qualifications:

• Proficiency in Python, including experience with data-oriented libraries such as pandas, NumPy, or PyArrow

• Experience with at least one web framework (e.g., FastAPI, Flask, Django) or frontend framework (e.g., Vue, React, Angular) with TypeScript

• Understanding of fundamental computer vision concepts (e.g., object detection, image classification, 2D/3D bounding boxes, point clouds)

• Experience with SQL or large-scale data processing tools (e.g., Databricks, PySpark, or similar)

• Experience working with version control (Git) and code review workflows

• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work independently on open-ended engineering problems

Bonus Qualifications:

• Experience with ML frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow, particularly for vision tasks

• Familiarity with embedding models (e.g., CLIP/OpenCLIP) or vision-language models (VLMs) for data curation or retrieval

• Experience with distributed computing or pipeline orchestration frameworks (e.g., Spark/PySpark, Airflow, or similar)

• Exposure to cloud infrastructure (AWS S3, Databricks)

• Familiarity with protobuf for structured data serialization

• Prior work on data mining, active learning, or dataset curation for ML training

• Experience with LiDAR/camera sensor data in autonomous driving or robotics contexts

Requirements:

• Currently working towards a B.S, or M.S degree in a relevant engineering program

• Good academic standing

• Able to commit to a 12-week internship during one of the following summer 2026 cohorts: May 18th - August 7th, OR May 26th - August 14th, OR June 15th - September 4th

• At least one previous industry internship, co-op, or project completed in a relevant area

• Ability to relocate to the Bay Area, California for the duration of the internship

• Interns at Zoox may not use any proprietary information they are working on as part of their thesis, any published work with their university, or to be distributed to anyone outside of Zoox

Compensation:

The monthly salary for this position is $9,500. Compensation will vary based on geographic location. Additional benefits may include medical insurance, and a housing stipend (relocation assistance will be offered based on eligibility).

About Zoox

Zoox is developing the first ground-up, fully autonomous vehicle fleet and the supporting ecosystem required to bring this technology to market. Sitting at the intersection of robotics, machine learning, and design, Zoox aims to provide the next generation of mobility-as-a-service in urban environments. We’re looking for top talent that shares our passion and wants to be part of a fast-moving and highly execution-oriented team.

A Final Note:

You do not need to match every listed expectation to apply for this position. Here at Zoox, we know that diverse perspectives foster the innovation we need to be successful, and we are committed to building a team that encompasses a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and skills.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. 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.