---
title: 'Senior Machine Learning Researcher, Large Behavior Models & Diffusion Policy at Toyota Research Institute'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-machine-learning-researcher-large-behavior-models-diffusion-policy-ajkra5mn3g5k'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-09'
---

# Senior Machine Learning Researcher, Large Behavior Models & Diffusion Policy at Toyota Research Institute

- **Company:** Toyota Research Institute
- **Location:** Los Altos, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2025-03-26
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-09
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/tri/68c7cb5b-c6ce-4cc0-b43b-b262253b0915

## Job description

At Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we’re on a mission to improve the quality of human life. We’re developing new tools and capabilities to amplify the human experience. To lead this transformative shift in mobility, we’ve built a world-class team advancing the state of the art in AI, robotics, driving, and material sciences.

The Team

The Automated Driving Advance Development division at TRI focuses on enabling innovation and transformation at Toyota by building a bridge between TRI research and Toyota products, services, and needs. We achieve this through partnership, collaboration, and shared commitment. The Automated Driving Advance Development team is leading a new cross-organizational project between TRI and Woven by Toyota to research and develop a fully end-to-end learned automated driving / ADAS stack. This cross-org collaborative project is synergistic with TRI’s robotics divisions' efforts in Diffusion Policy and Large Behavior Models (LBM).

The Opportunity

We are looking for a Senior Machine Learning Researcher to join us in developing a state-of-the-art, pixels-to-action, end-to-end system for automated driving. As an expert in machine learning, you will contribute to designing and developing innovative models for our autonomy stack and deploying them on vehicle platforms to solve daily driving tasks and handle long-tail scenarios.

An ideal candidate has a strong track record of leading independent research efforts, preferably including mentoring and collaborating with less experienced students and researchers. You will help to drive our exploration into end-to-end learning approaches for automated driving, using large-scale sensor data directly for perception, planning, and prediction to overcome traditional "information bottlenecks." This includes expanding our successful Large Behavior Model (LBM) robotics efforts and Diffusion Policy (DP) research into the driving domain, designing scalable architectures, and integrating visual-language-action modalities. Beyond refining models for closed-loop driving on public roads and in simulation, you will also explore data quality filtering, transfer learning from diverse data sources, and edge deployment optimization. This work is part of Toyota’s global AI efforts to build a more coordinated global approach across Toyota entities.

## Responsibilities

- Conduct ambitious research to advance the state-of-the-art in using new capabilities in generative AI (e.g., recent results in diffusion policy https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.04137,https://wp-research-uk.github.io/safepathnet/) for end-to-end perception, planning, and prediction in automated driving with a focus on computer vision as the primary sensing modality.
- Research and implement scalable end-to-end architectures that process raw sensor data to generate vehicle trajectories, addressing the challenges of long-tail driving scenarios with low data coverage.
- Prototype, validate, and iterate model architectures using imitation learning and large-scale data, ensuring robust performance across diverse scenarios.
- Perform closed-loop evaluations in sensor simulations and real-world testing environments to rigorously assess model performance, stability, and scalability.
- Explore multi-modal and language-conditioned models to broaden the applicability of end-to-end policies, using external data sources and transfer learning to enhance generalization.
- Collaborate with researchers and engineers across TRI, Woven by Toyota, and Toyota’s global ecosystem to accelerate model deployment and evaluation in both controlled environments (closed-course) and public road driving.
- Take the lead on writing and publishing research results in peer-reviewed venues.

## Qualifications

- A PhD or equivalent experience in a robotics-relevant or embodied-AI field such as Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, or Engineering.
- A consistent track record of publishing at high-impact conferences/journals (CVPR, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML, CoRL, RSS, ICRA, ICCV, ECCV, PAMI, IJCV, etc.)
- A consistent track record of independent research.
- Demonstrated ability to independently formulate and complete a research agenda while collaborating across subject areas.
- Experience training large-scale models, including foundation models (e.g., vision-language models, text-to-video models).
- Proficiency in Python and C++ for implementing and evaluating research ideas.

Bonus Qualifications

- Experience with robot motion planning techniques like trajectory optimization, sampling-based planning, and model predictive control, or experience with automated driving domains (e.g., perception, prediction, mapping, localization, planning, simulation).
- Experience in developing production-level code for real-time operating systems.
- Experience optimizing runtime-critical systems for Linux, UNIX-like real-time operating systems on automotive-grade compute platforms, and building safety-critical software architectures.

Please add a link to Google Scholar and include a full list of publications when submitting your CV for this position.

The pay range for this position at commencement of employment is expected to be between $200,000 and $287,500/year for California-based roles. Base pay offered will depend on multiple individualized factors, including, but not limited to, a candidate's experience, skills, job-related knowledge, and market location. TRI offers a generous benefits package including medical, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k) eligibility, paid time off benefits (including vacation, sick time, and parental leave), and an annual cash bonus structure. Additional details regarding these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment.

Please reference this Candidate Privacy Notice to inform you of the categories of personal information that we collect from individuals who inquire about and/or apply to work for Toyota Research Institute, Inc. or its subsidiaries, including Toyota A.I. Ventures GP, L.P., and the purposes for which we use such personal information.

TRI is fueled by a diverse and inclusive community of people with unique backgrounds, education and life experiences. We are dedicated to fostering an innovative and collaborative environment by living the values that are an essential part of our culture. We believe diversity makes us stronger and are proud to provide Equal Employment Opportunity for all, without regard to an applicant’s race, color, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, religion, marital status, genetic information, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state or local laws.

It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment.

## About Toyota Research Institute

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Toyota Research Institute (TRI) conducts advanced research in AI, robotics, automated driving, and energy materials to amplify human ability and improve quality of life.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation)
- **Headquarters**: Los Altos, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2016 (per LinkedIn)
- **Founders**: Not publicly disclosed; led by CEO Dr. Gill Pratt

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: Artificial intelligence, robotics, automated driving, energy & materials, human-centered AI
- **Target customers**: Internal (Toyota), academic partners (Stanford, MIT), and eventual commercial deployment through Toyota
- **Mission**: “Improve the quality of human life” and “Enable mobility for all” by creating tools and capabilities that make lives safer, more sustainable, and more independent.

## Products & Services
TRI is organized around four core research areas, each producing prototypes, software, and intellectual property:

- **Automated Driving**: Developing safe, scalable automated driving technology to enable mobility for all.
- **Energy & Materials**: Accelerating carbon neutrality through innovations in batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, and emissions-free vehicles.
- **Human-Centered AI**: Using AI to understand human behavior and interactions, aiding decision-making and improving human-machine collaboration.
- **Human Interactive Driving**: Building intelligent vehicles that place the human at the center of the driving experience.
- **Robotics**: Creating human‑amplification robotic capabilities for aging society, labor shortages, and sustainable production (mobile manipulation, user interfaces, prototyping).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not applicable (private subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation)
- **Key Metric**: Headcount of 323 employees (+12.6% YoY, +53 people) as of late 2025/early 2026
- **Notable Investors / Partners**: Toyota Motor Corporation (parent), Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Toyota Ventures (venture arm)
- **Growth Signals**: 12.6% headcount growth; 978 scholarly works with 141,269 citations (field‑weighted citation impact 4.9); 46% of works involve international collaboration; active hiring across multiple research and engineering roles

## Competitive Advantages
- **Toyota Backing**: Access to Toyota’s global resources, manufacturing expertise, and long‑term strategic vision.
- **Top Talent**: Over half of the technical team holds PhD degrees; 454 actively affiliated researchers, with 266 recent arrivals.
- **Academic Partnerships**: Close collaboration with Stanford and MIT, enabling cutting‑edge research and talent pipeline.
- **Mission‑Driven Research**: Focus on real‑world impact (mobility, aging society, carbon neutrality) rather than short‑term product cycles.

## Strategic Focus
- **Current Priorities**: Advancing embodied AI and large behavior models; scaling mobile manipulation robots for real‑world tasks; developing next‑generation battery and hydrogen fuel cell materials; achieving emissions‑free mobility.
- **Direction for Growth**: Expanding robotics capabilities to address labor shortages and aging populations; deepening human‑AI interaction research; bringing advanced mobility technology to market faster through Toyota.

## Why Work Here
- **Work‑Life Balance**: 4‑day workweek (every Friday off), flexible hybrid model, 4 weeks paid vacation, generous holiday schedule.
- **Benefits**: 401(k) with matching and profit sharing, medical/dental/vision, 16‑26 weeks paid parental leave, back‑up child/elder care, gender‑affirming care, fertility benefits, pet insurance, life insurance.
- **Wellness & Development**: Monthly well‑being stipend, on‑demand fitness/nutrition/mindfulness resources, employee assistance program, learning and development programs.
- **Culture**: Diverse and inclusive community; values‑driven collaboration; “how we work” is as important as what we do.
- **Locations**: Los Altos (HQ, Silicon Valley) and Cambridge, MA (robotics lab). Remote/hybrid options available.
- **Engineering Culture**: Strong emphasis on research excellence, PhD‑heavy environment, opportunity to publish and patent, intern program for top students.

## Sources
1. [tri.global/careers](https://www.tri.global/careers)
2. [tri.global/about-us](https://www.tri.global/about-us)
3. [linkedin.com/company/toyota-research-institute](https://linkedin.com/company/toyota-research-institute)
4. [jobs.lever.co/tri](https://jobs.lever.co/tri)
5. [tri.global/our-work/robotics](https://www.tri.global/our-work/robotics)

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