Principal Tech Lead Manager - VLM/LLM for Large Scale Data Mining

Mission 

We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Principal Technical Lead Manager to lead our large-scale data mining efforts utilizing cutting-edge Vision Language Models (VLM) and Large Language Models (LLM). The ideal candidate will have a strong background in machine learning, data engineering, and leadership, with experience in developing and deploying advanced AI solutions for data analysis and extraction.

At Motional, data play a critical role in fueling our ML-centered autonomous driving vehicle. Our robo-taxi fleet collects petabytes of data on the road every day – the Data Mining team is mining & filtering the massive influx of fleet data by developing billion-scale data workflows and state-of-the-art mining algorithms. Through our mining and learning frameworks we continuously improve the on-road performance of ML products for perception, prediction & planning with every mile driven.

We mine for model errors, anomalies, rare objects & long-tail driving scenarios across millions of driving hours – these are used for laser-focused ML model training and continuous edge case validation. We are looking for an engineer to spearhead new mining strategies & workflows and help deliver high-quality data that improve our core ML products.

What You'll do

• Lead a team of engineers and researchers in developing data products utilizing foundation models such as multi-modal encoding models (CLIP-style models), vision language models (VLMs) and large language models (LLMs) and adapt them to the autonomous driving domain via pre-training, fine-tuning and prompt optimization.
• Drive innovation by researching and experimenting with new VLM/LLM techniques and technologies.
• Own large-scale mining workflows that surface rare objects, model errors & long-tail events.
• Build high-quality datasets to improve ML products through training & edge case validation.
• Provide statistical depth on model performance & generalization through rigorous error analysis across complex driving scenarios.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to the team, fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.
• Manage project timelines, resources, and deliverables to ensure successful project execution.

What We're Looking for

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field.
• Extensive experience in machine learning, data mining, and natural language processing.
• Proven experience in developing and deploying VLM/LLM models.
• Strong programming skills in Python and familiarity with machine learning frameworks such as TensorFlow or PyTorch.
• Experience with large-scale data processing and distributed computing technologies.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and problem-solving skills.

Bonus Points

• Ph.D. in Computer Science or a related field.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure.
• Experience with machine learning in the autonomous driving domain.
• Publications or contributions to the AI/ML community.