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Zoox is developing the first ground-up, fully autonomous vehicle fleet and supporting ecosystem. The Core Data Science team builds products and data assets that enable teams across Zoox to measure and improve autonomy and operational performance of the fleet.
In this role, you will focus on fleet simulation—the environment data teams use to develop, test, and evaluate algorithms that orchestrate the autonomous fleet (dispatch, routing, and vehicle assignment) and understand algorithm performance before deployment to the road. You'll piece together constituent components into a coherent, easy-to-use simulation environment, filling gaps and building generalizable mechanisms so data scientists can measure algorithm impact on fleet efficiency.
Key responsibilities:
- Design, prototype, and help deploy algorithms for vehicle assignment, staging, routing, and pricing
- Model inputs to orchestration (rider demand, data-collection value, servicing needs, events, and policies) as objectives and constraints
- Work with specialists in marketplace economics, forecasting, and autonomy to turn their models into fleet decisions
- Measure impact on revenue, utilization, and rider experience through simulation, offline evaluation, and online experiments
- Contribute to evaluation and rollout processes for orchestration improvements
You'll join a diverse, experienced team with rapidly growing scope while working with one of the industry's most valuable autonomous vehicle datasets.
REQUIREMENTS:
- PhD or MS with 2+ years of relevant industry or research experience in operations research, robotics, controls, transportation, computer science, applied math, or related field
- Deep expertise in at least one of: combinatorial/integer optimization, stochastic optimization or control, reinforcement learning/approximate DP, network flows, or marketplace/demand modeling, plus curiosity to work across the rest
- Strong coding skills in Python, C++, or Rust; write clean, tested, version-controlled code
- Ability to turn ambiguous real-world problems into well-defined models and explain tradeoffs to non-specialists
- Good communication and collaboration skills
BONUS QUALIFICATIONS:
- Internship or research experience in ride-hailing, delivery, logistics, or AV fleets (dispatch, routing, rebalancing, pricing)
- Algorithms deployed in production or used on real operational data
- Publications in operations research, transportation, or robotics venues
