Motional · 12 hours ago
Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Data Mining
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Full-time
Hybrid
Senior Level
$172K/yr - $229K/yr
6+ years expMotional is a driverless technology company focused on transforming transportation through autonomous vehicles. They are seeking a Senior Machine Learning Engineer on the Data Mining team to design and implement advanced models for multimodal sensor data, optimize data discovery workflows, and enhance the overall model improvement lifecycle.
AutomotiveAutonomous VehiclesFleet ManagementInformation TechnologySoftware
Responsibilities
Architect and Train Distilled Models: Design and implement teacher-student model frameworks for multimodal sensor data. Develop training pipelines for knowledge distillation. Ensure student models maintain high accuracy while drastically reducing inference latency and memory footprint
Reinforcement Learning for Data Discover: Build RL-based policy learning and reasoning systems for autonomous driving applications. Implement and scale RL training workflows (e.g., PPO, DQN, actor-critic methods) for simulation and real-world interaction. Explore reward shaping, environment modeling, and multi-agent RL where applicable
Optimize Model Deployment for Real-Time Inference: Collaborate with backend engineers to deploy distilled and RL models into production. Optimize for latency, throughput, and hardware efficiency across GPU/CPU clusters. Implement model versioning, A/B testing, and monitoring for performance regressions
Research and Integrate Agentic Systems: Explore and prototype agentic workflows for autonomous reasoning, chain-of-thought prompting, and goal-directed behavior. Integrate such systems into our broader autonomy stack as experimental or production components
Drive Production Reliability: Establish patterns for graceful degradation, fault tolerance, and cost optimization. Operate Omnitag as a mission-critical data platform serving the entire ML organization, with a focus on reliability, debuggability, and operational excellence
Mentor and Collaborate: Work closely with ML scientists, data engineers, and autonomy teams to translate research advances into scalable engineering solutions. Guide junior engineers in best practices for model training, evaluation, and deployment
Qualification
Required
BS in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or related field, or equivalent professional experience
6+ years of hands-on experience in machine learning engineering, with a focus on model post training, optimization, and deployment
Strong experience with model distillation or teacher-student training - practical knowledge of loss functions, training strategies, and evaluation of compressed models
Proven experience with reinforcement learning in production or research settings: policy optimization, reward design, simulation environments, and RL-based reasoning
Expert-level proficiency in Python and ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX)
Strong software engineering fundamentals: testing, CI/CD, containerization, and system design
Experience deploying ML models in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and optimizing for inference
Demonstrated ability to ship production-grade ML systems and mentor team members
Demonstrated track record of shipping robust, well-tested, production-grade systems and mentoring junior engineers
Preferred
MS/PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or related field
Experience with agentic systems, autonomous reasoning, chain-of-thought models, or LLM-based planning
Background in autonomous driving, robotics, or real-time decision-making systems
Familiarity with multimodal learning, sensor fusion, or embodied AI
Experience building active learning loops, using the model to find the data that breaks the model
Experience with ML-based data mining, active learning, or contrastive learning
Knowledge of model serving tools (TF Serving, Triton, TorchServe) and MLOps platforms
Publications or open-source contributions in RL, distillation, or efficient ML
Benefits
Medical
Dental
Vision
401k with a company match
Health saving accounts
Life insurance
Pet insurance
And more
Company
Motional
Motional offers an autonomous driving platform for robotaxi providers, fleet operators, and automotive manufacturers.
1001-5000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Motional has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (56)
2024 (111)
2023 (57)
2022 (110)
2021 (100)
2020 (7)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
unknown2024-05-03Acquired
2024-03-15Seed
Leadership Team
Laura Major
President and CEO
Balajee Kannan
Vice President, Autonomy
Recent News
Clean Technica
2026-01-17
2026-01-16
Boston Globe
2026-01-16
Company data provided by crunchbase