AI Research Scientist (Adaptive Behavior Systems)

Location: Los Altos, California, United States; hybrid workplace

Salary: $176,000–$253,500 per year for California-based roles

Company

Research and development organization advancing AI, robotics, autonomous driving, and material sciences to improve human life and mobility.

What you will do

• Conduct machine learning research integrating behavioral science into Human-Centered AI.
• Develop and evaluate generative AI and machine learning methods for modeling human behavior.
• Train, fine-tune, benchmark, and assess large-scale foundational models and agentic systems.
• Collaborate with researchers across disciplines and with university partners.
• Publish findings in academic journals and conferences and communicate research to Toyota stakeholders.
• Transfer research insights and prototypes into Toyota technologies.

Requirements

• PhD in computer science, machine learning, or a closely related field, plus 1–7 years of machine learning research or related industry-project experience.
• Strong publication record in machine learning, NLP, deep learning, or related fields.
• Experience with LLM or MLLM pretraining, fine-tuning such as SFT and RLHF, and agentic systems.
• Proficiency in Python and modern deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.
• Ability to independently identify research opportunities, formulate problems, and lead projects end to end.
• Strong collaboration, communication, project management, and autonomous working skills.

Nice to have

• Experience with diffusion models, uncertainty modeling, reinforcement learning, or physiological signal processing.
• Background in cognitive or behavioral human modeling with generative AI.
• Experience in computational behavioral or social science, human-computer interaction, or neuroscience.

Culture & Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• 401(k) eligibility and paid vacation, sick, and parental leave.
• Annual cash bonus structure.
• Collaborative and inclusive environment supporting cross-disciplinary research.
• Applications should include a Google Scholar link with the complete publication list.