{"id":285995,"url":"https://alion.io/job/42dot-staff-vla-engineer","title":"Staff VLA Engineer","company":{"id":256,"name":"42dot","domain":"42dot.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/42dot","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":83,"open_postings":16,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.688,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":43,"computed_at":"2026-10-26T05:57:25Z"}},"role":"Industrial Engineering","role_family":"Industrial Engineering","seniority":"staff","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Sunnyvale, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":189000,"max":311220,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":311220},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"JAX","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"Vision-Language-Action","optional":false},{"name":"World Models","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":true},{"name":"CARLA","optional":true},{"name":"Embodied AI","optional":true},{"name":"Function Calling","optional":true},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":true},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-03T21:21:16Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-03","last_verified_at":"2026-10-26T22:23:02Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":53,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":53},"description":"We are looking for the best\nAbout Us\n42dot is a mobility AI company committed to solving mobility challenges with software and AI. As the Global Software Center of Hyundai Motor Group, 42dot pioneers the future of mobility by advancing the development of software-defined vehicles.\nWe develop safety-first, user-centric software-defined vehicle technologies that deliver the latest performance through continuous updates like smartphones. By advancing software and AI technology, 42dot envisions a world where everything is connected and moves autonomously through a self-managing urban transportation operating system.\nAs a Staff VLA Engineer you'll contribute to next-generation autonomous driving intelligence research, working alongside the team to push past current VLA capabilities. You'll bring hands-on expertise in foundation models, multimodal learning, world models, or autonomous systems, and help turn research ideas into real technical progress.\nResponsibilities\nContribute to Next-Generation VLA Architectures\nResearch and prototype next-generation Vision-Language-Action architectures.\n\nExplore scalable multimodal foundation models for autonomous driving.\n\nHelp develop architectures with improved generalization, reasoning, and long-horizon decision making.\n\nSupport work on large driving models that unify perception, planning, and action generation.\n\nSupport World Model & Driving Reasoning Research\nBuild and experiment with world-model-based approaches for predictive driving intelligence.\n\nWork on future-state prediction, behavior forecasting, and counterfactual simulation.\n\nContribute to long-horizon planning and reasoning research for autonomous driving.\n\nHelp build models that understand complex traffic interactions and latent agent intentions.\n\nExplore Agentic Driving Systems\nResearch goal-driven autonomous driving agents.\n\nHelp develop architectures that integrate reasoning, planning, memory, and action.\n\nInvestigate driving agents capable of adaptive decision making in open-world environments.\n\nContribute ideas toward future driving-agent architectures as successors to current VLA systems.\n\nQualifications\nMS or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Machine Learning, Electrical Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).\n\nStrong hands-on experience with deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, JAX).\n\nSolid understanding of foundation models, multimodal learning, or transformer-based architectures.\n\nExperience training or fine-tuning large-scale models (vision, language, or multimodal).\n\nStrong software engineering skills and experience working with large-scale data pipelines.\n\nAbility to read, implement, and extend ideas from recent AI research papers.\n\nExcellent collaboration and communication skills, comfortable working across distributed, cross-functional, and cross-cultural teams (Silicon Valley + HQ Korea).\n\nPreferred Qualifications\nResearch experience in autonomous driving, robotics, or embodied AI (e.g., perception, planning, control, or end-to-end driving models).\n\nExperience with world models, model-based reinforcement learning, or predictive/generative simulation.\n\nFamiliarity with Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models or agentic AI architectures (reasoning, planning, memory, tool use).\n\nPublications at top-tier AI/ML/robotics venues (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, CoRL, RSS).\n\nExperience with large-scale distributed training and model optimization.\n\nPrior experience contributing research to production systems or bringing prototypes to deployment.\n\nFamiliarity with simulation environments for autonomous driving (e.g., CARLA, nuPlan, Waymo Open Dataset).\n\nInterview Process\nApplication Review - Coding Test - 1st interview - 2nd interview - Offer Negotiation - Hiring\n\nThe screening procedures may vary depending on the position, schedule, or other circumstances.\nYou will be individually notified of the screening schedule and results via the email address provided in your application.\n\nCompensation\n$189,000 to $311,220\n\nAdditional Information\nIn accordance with fair hiring practices, do not include any personal information unrelated to your job qualifications (e.g., Social Security Number, family relations, marital status, age, photo, physical condition, place of birth, etc.) in your resume.\n\nAll documents must be submitted in PDF format and under 30MB in size.\n\nIf you experience issues uploading your resume, please send it along with the job posting URL to .\n\nWe strongly encourage applications from U.S. veterans and candidates eligible for employment preference under applicable laws.\n\nQualified individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply and will receive consideration under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).\n\n42dot does not accept unsolicited resumes and will not pay fees for any such submissions. Equal Opportunity Statement\n\n42dot is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or veteran status.\n\n※ Please review the following information before applying.\nHow to work in 42dot, About 42dot Way →","description_format":"text","description_chars":5250,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"master","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Autonomous Driving","Smart Mobility","Automotive Software"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-05T14:03:45Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 3","filings_12m":3,"filings_prev_12m":3,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":187500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":34,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.619,"p_room":0.55,"age_days":52,"expected_fill_days":43,"reasons":["conf:2","stale_co","urgency","velocity","win:tail"],"computed_at":"2026-10-26T05:57:25Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":311220,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/42dot-staff-vla-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/42dot-staff-vla-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-26T23:20:04Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":31851,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-27T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":256},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=256"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2F42dot-staff-vla-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2F42dot-staff-vla-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2F42dot-staff-vla-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/42dot-staff-vla-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2F42dot-staff-vla-engineer"}]}