Senior/Staff Software Engineer, ML Training Optimization

The job

LIVE Employer public job feed (private-sector employer) Source: the employer's public careers feed · Data: listed 2026-10-16

Job description

Zoox is on a mission to reimagine transportation and build ground-up autonomous robotaxis that are safe, reliable, clean, and enjoyable for everyone. We’re still early in deploying on public roads, so this is a great time to join and have a significant impact. The ML Platform team enables innovation in large-scale Foundation models, VLMs, and VLAs to make autonomous driving as seamless as possible.

The Opportunity
Are you excited to own ML training optimization at Zoox and make the models that power autonomous driving train faster, cheaper, and at greater scale? You’ll set technical direction for distributed training, parallelism strategies, mixed-precision training, and RL on SOTA accelerators, especially for multi-modal VLA and VLM models. You’ll partner with all Autonomy teams (Perception, Prediction, Planner, Simulation, Collision Avoidance) and act as a force multiplier for our internal customers, while mentoring engineers and shaping the team’s roadmap as we expand into new ML domains. If you want to learn more about our stack behind autonomous driving, please look here. If you want to learn more about our ML Infrastructure, here is one of our past talks at re:Invent.

In this role, you will:

• Lead the design, implementation, and operation of training performance optimizations (data/tensor/pipeline parallelism, mixed precision, gradient checkpointing, GPU kernels) to scale VLM, VLA, and Foundation model training.
• Own the technical strategy and multi-quarter roadmap for RL framework and RL performance optimization for driving foundation models.
• Drive profiling and root-cause analysis of throughput bottlenecks across the compute, compiler, framework, and cluster-networking stack.
• Partner with ML researchers, data engineers, and hardware engineers to define requirements and make architectural decisions for large-scale training infrastructure.
• Build custom kernels and benchmarks that track and validate performance gains across the stack.
• Mentor engineers and raise the team’s technical bar through design reviews and best practices.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of total experience, including 4+ years on large-scale model training platforms, with a record of leading projects end to end.
• Deep experience with distributed training frameworks (Megatron-LM, TorchTitan) and efficiently utilizing GPU/accelerator clusters at scale.
• Experience with RL frameworks (Verl/MILES) and algorithms (GRPO, PPO).
• Experience with collective communication libraries (e.g., NCCL) and optimizing communication/compute overlap in multi-node training.
• Strong command of profiling tools (NVIDIA Nsight, PyTorch Profiler, or XLA/JAX profiling) to find and resolve training bottlenecks.
• Proficiency in Python or C++.
• Experience with ML compilers, performance tooling, or hardware/software co-design (GPU/TPU/accelerator architectures).
• Ability to influence across teams and communicate technical tradeoffs to both researchers and engineers.

Explore around this job

Field: Technology Sub-niche: Data, analytics and AI All jobs at Zoox Jobs in California Jobs in Foster City, CA Foster City city guide California state guide San Mateo County economy

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About the role

This is a — role in the Technology field (Data, analytics and AI) at Zoox.

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The city

The job is in Foster City, CA. Below is what the official statistics say about living and working there.

How Foster City compares. Among the 145 largest places in California, Foster City is #131 by population, #140 for rent (#1 = cheapest), #10 for college degrees (#1 = most), #10 for remote work (#1 = most). Its county, San Mateo County, is #2 of 58 counties for average pay ($196,441).

The place in numbers

Foster City has 32,792 residents (ACS 2020–2024), about 0.1% of the population of California. It covers 4 square miles of land, which works out to roughly 8,659 people per square mile. The median age is 39.5, 4% older than the state median (39.5 against 37.9).

Housing

The median gross rent is $3,501 a month (rent plus utilities), 72% above the state median ($3,501 against $2,036). Over a year that is 21.1% of the median household income. US housing guidance treats housing as affordable when it takes 30% of income or less, so the typical household is under that line. The median home value is $1,838,200, which is 9.2 times the median household income ($199,143); a ratio above 5 usually means buying is out of reach without savings or a second income. 50.8% of households own their home, 9% below the state average (50.8% against 55.9%).

Work and pay

The San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA metropolitan area has 2,373,920 jobs in the BLS wage survey, and the median pay across all occupations is $74,260 a year, 46% above the national median ($74,260 against $50,980). The biggest occupation groups are office and administrative support (226,320 jobs, median $62,120); management (223,100 jobs, median $176,340); business and financial operations (207,030 jobs, median $112,960). The area is most specialised in computer and mathematical (1.9 times) and life, physical, and social science (1.8 times), where the share of workers is well above the national share. The best-paying groups with at least 5,000 jobs are management ($176,340) and computer and mathematical ($167,770). In 2026M09 the unemployment rate of San Mateo County was 3.9%. 67.2% of residents aged 16 and over are in the labour force. The city lies in San Mateo County; its jobs, pay by industry and GDP are on the county page.

Getting around

Among workers, 51.8% drive alone, 2.9% use public transit, 1.7% walk, 34.2% work from home. 20.6% of workers commute 45 minutes or more, 6% above the state average (20.6% against 19.4%). Remote work is more common than in the state as a whole, which widens the set of employers a resident can work for without moving.

People and education

73.8% of adults aged 25 and over hold a bachelor's degree or higher, 99% above the state share (73.8% against 37.1%). 49.5% of residents were born outside the United States, 83% above the state share (49.5% against 27.0%). The poverty rate is 4.1%, 66% below the state rate (4.1% against 12.0%).

Climate

The warmest month is Sep, averaging 61°F (16.0°C), and the coolest is Jan at 51°F (10.7°C). About 515 mm (20 inches) of precipitation falls in a year; Dec is the wettest month (115 mm) and Jul the driest (2 mm). These values come from NASA satellite-based climatology on a grid of about 50 km, so they describe the wider area, not a weather station in the city.

Nearby cities to compare

Closest cities in this guide: San Mateo (3 miles, rent 12% lower); Redwood City (4 miles, rent 15% lower); Belmont (4 miles, rent 18% lower); San Carlos (5 miles, rent 18% lower). Rent differences are against Foster City; use the Compare tab to put any two cities side by side.

Full guide to Foster City →California guideAll jobs in Foster City

Official links for Foster City

• Official website of Foster City: fostercity.org
• Census Bureau data profile for Foster City
• Official website of San Mateo County: smcgov.org
• Official state website: ca.gov
• BLS Economy at a Glance: California

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Where to live

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Career paths

We could not match this title to one occupation, so here are the other sub-niches in Technology, where your skills may carry over:

Cybersecurity (760) Software engineering (4655) Cloud, IT and infrastructure (1161) Product management (935)

Distances

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The employer

Zoox is the employer in this listing. See all its open jobs here →

We do not hold headcount or revenue for this employer. Check its careers site and, if it is listed on a stock exchange, its public filings (SEC EDGAR search).

What it is like to work at a company (culture, schedules, benefits) is not in the source data, so we do not describe it. Read the description and ask the questions under "How to prepare".

Other open jobs at Zoox

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Same sub-niche: Data, analytics and AI

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FAQ

What is the Senior/Staff Software Engineer, ML Training Optimization job at Zoox?

A private-sector role in technology (data, analytics and ai) listed 25 days ago. The full description is on this page and on the employer's page.

Where is this job?

Foster City, CA.

How do I apply?

Use the "View this job and apply on the employer's page" button. AtiveSite does not receive applications.

How much does it pay?

The listing does not publish pay, and we could not match the title to one official occupation.

What is the cost of living there?

Median rent in Foster City is $3,501 a month and median household income $199,143 (ACS 2020–2024).

How old is this listing?

It was posted on 2026-10-16 (25 days ago). Jobs older than 90 days are not shown.

Are there similar jobs?

Yes: browse data, analytics and ai jobs in California.

Sources and terms

• Job data: Zoox careers page public feed (listing dated 2026-10-16). The job disappears from this site when it disappears from the source.
• Wages and projections: BLS OEWS (May 2025) and Employment Projections 2025–35.
• City and county figures: Census Bureau ACS 2020–2024, BEA, BLS QCEW and LAUS, NASA POWER climatology; distances from Census Gazetteer coordinates.

AtiveSite is not affiliated with or endorsed by the employer or any government agency, and does not process applications. Verify every detail with the employer before acting.

Sources

• BLS OEWS (wages and employment by occupation, May 2025)
• BLS Employment Projections 2025–35
• BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics
• BLS JOLTS
• BLS State and Metro Area Employment
• Census Bureau American Community Survey (via Census Reporter)
• BEA GDP by state and Regional Price Parities
• IRS 2026 tax adjustments
• U.S. Department of Labor, minimum wage by state
• Tax Foundation state income tax rates 2026
• USAJOBS
• USCIS
• U.S. Department of State, visas
• NASA POWER climatology
• GeoNames / Census Gazetteer (coordinates)