Senior Applied Research Scientist

Location: US, CA, Santa Clara

NVIDIA has been transforming computer graphics, PC gaming, and accelerated computing for more than 25 years. It’s a unique legacy of innovation that’s fueled by great technology—and amazing people. Today, we’re tapping into the unlimited potential of AI to define the next era of computing. An era in which our GPU acts as the brains of computers, robots, and self-driving cars that can understand the world. Doing what’s never been done before takes vision, innovation, and the world’s best talent. As an NVIDIAN, you’ll be immersed in an inclusive, supportive environment where everyone is inspired to do their best work. Come join the team and see how you can make a lasting impact on the world.

The Data and Agent Loop Lab is looking for a Senior Applied Research Scientist to help us build the next generation of multimodal search and curation systems for Physical AI. We're building the foundation for robots, autonomous vehicles, and intelligent machines that can perceive, reason, and act in the real world. The data that trains these systems is as important as the models themselves, and the team sits at the center of that challenge.

You'll work alongside world-class researchers and engineers to solve some of the hardest data problems in AI — at petabyte scale, across video, sensor, and language modalities. Your work will directly shape what our foundation models learn, and will help external customers build their own Physical AI pipelines on top of NVIDIA's platform.

What you'll be doing

Researching and designing multimodal search and curation systems optimized for Physical AI data — video, lidar, radar, text, and more. These systems help researchers and customers find, filter, and surface the highest-quality data — including embedding-based retrieval, quality scoring models, active learning loops, and relevance evaluation frameworks.

Developing datasets, benchmarks, and experimental frameworks that establish guidelines for data curation in robotics and AV contexts — and publishing those findings so the community can benefit.

Translating research into production-grade software; writing papers, blog posts, and documentation that help customers understand and apply our methods.

Staying current with the latest in data curation, information retrieval, and multimodal learning — and bringing those insights back to the team.

What we need to see

• M.S. or Ph.D. in a relevant field — machine learning, information retrieval, robotics, AV, or multimodal AI (or equivalent experience)
• 8+ years of industry or research experience.
• Deep understanding of the data challenges specific to Physical AI.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals — experience shipping production-grade systems, not just research prototypes.
• Clear, compelling communication: you can write a great paper and explain a tradeoff to a non-expert collaborator!
• Experience mentoring junior researchers or engineers is a plus.

Ways to stand out from the crowd

Hands-on experience with data curation or search in robotics, autonomous vehicles, or embodied AI.

Familiarity with model training pipelines and the role data quality plays in model performance.

Experience with large-scale video data — collection, processing, and retrieval.

Prior work on semantic or neural search (dense retrieval, CLIP-style embeddings, multimodal indexing).

Publications in top venues on data-centric AI, information retrieval, or multimodal learning.

With competitive salaries and a generous benefits package (www.nvidiabenefits.com ), we are widely considered to be one of the technology world’s most desirable employers. We have some of the most forward-thinking and hardworking people in the world working for us and, due to outstanding growth, our best-in-class engineering teams are rapidly growing. If you're a creative and autonomous engineer with a real passion for technology, we want to hear from you!

You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.

Applications for this job will be accepted at least until November 8, 2026.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.

NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.

NVIDIA is committed to fostering an inclusive work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.