Gatik AI

Machine Learning Engineer at Gatik AI (Santa Clara, CA)

Gatik AI· Santa Clara, CA·

Job description

About the role

We are seeking a high-impact, technically deep Machine Learning Engineer to develop, optimize, and deploy production ML models across our autonomous vehicle (AV) stack. This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy building models end-to-end - from data and training through optimization and real-time deployment on autonomous vehicles.

You will work closely with perception, prediction, planning, infrastructure, systems, and hardware teams to ensure models are efficient, scalable, reliable, and production-ready for both on-vehicle and cloud workflows.

This role is onsite 5 days a week at our Santa Clara, CA office!

What you'll do

  • End-to-End Model Development: Own the full ML lifecycle, including data strategy, preprocessing, training, evaluation, optimization, deployment, and monitoring.
  • Autonomous Driving Models: Develop and improve models supporting perception, prediction, planning, and scene understanding.
  • Efficient Neural Network Design: Optimize models using techniques such as quantization, pruning, sparsification, compression, and efficient architecture design to meet strict latency, compute, memory, and power constraints.
  • Real-Time Deployment: Integrate trained models into C++-based autonomy systems and optimize inference for production vehicle hardware.
  • Model Optimization: Profile and optimize neural networks using CUDA, TensorRT, and related technologies.
  • Simulation and Evaluation: Analyze model performance using simulation and real-world driving data, identify failure modes, and drive improvements.
  • Scalable ML Infrastructure: Build high-throughput pipelines for training, evaluation, data processing, and large-scale offline inference.
  • Data Workflows and Tooling: Develop reliable pipelines for dataset curation, annotation, preprocessing, visualization, diagnostics, benchmarking, and continuous feedback from field data.
  • Cross-Functional Integration: Partner with autonomy, systems, hardware, and infrastructure teams to ensure ML components integrate reliably into the broader vehicle platform.

What we're looking for

  • Education: MS or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Statistics, Optimization, or a related field.
  • Experience: Open to all experience levels. Leveling will be determined based on experience and technical depth.
  • Programming & Frameworks:
  • Strong Python skills and experience with frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.
  • Strong C++ skills and experience integrating ML models into high-performance production systems.
  • Core ML & Systems Expertise:
  • Deep understanding of ML workflows, including data curation, training, evaluation, ablation studies, deployment, and inference optimization.
  • Experience deploying and optimizing neural networks for real-time, embedded, robotics, autonomous driving, or other performance-constrained systems.
  • Experience with model optimization techniques such as quantization, pruning, compression, and efficient architectures.
  • Experience with software architecture, profiling, latency optimization, system-level debugging, and data flow analysis.
  • Infrastructure & Compute Tools:
  • Experience with CUDA and TensorRT is highly desirable.
  • Experience with cloud-based ML training and evaluation pipelines, preferably Azure.

Bonus Qualifications:

  • Experience with transformers, multimodal models, diffusion models, world models, or end-to-end driving models is a plus.
  • Experience in autonomous driving, robotics, or other safety-critical real-time ML systems is strongly preferred.
  • Publications or demonstrated technical contributions in efficient ML, autonomous driving, robotics, or related areas are a plus.
  • Prior contributions to large-scale ML systems deployed in production.

Salary Range $170,000 - $240,000

Why work at Gatik AI

  • Culture & values: “Be Builders, Be Agile, Be Relentless, Be United, Be Bold” – emphasis on disciplined engineering, real-world impact, and team collaboration.
  • Work environment: Office-first culture with pet-friendly offices, daily catered lunches, fully stocked kitchens, and collaborative spaces. Locations include Mountain View (CA), Dallas (TX), Detroit (MI), Phoenix (AZ), Bentonville (AR), Toronto (ON), and others.
  • Benefits: Competitive salaries, stock options, 401(k) with match, comprehensive health/wellness benefits, paid parental leave, company events/retreats.
  • Engineering focus: Hands-on work in autonomy, robotics, simulation, and vehicle operations. Team includes engineers from Waymo, Zoox, Aurora, TuSimple, Nuro, and top universities.
  • Growth trajectory: Rapidly scaling company with proven commercial traction – employees directly shape the future of autonomous freight.

Application questions