Industrial PhD in AI for Autonomous Driving (WASP)

Work on AI that has to work

Most AI research is evaluated on benchmarks.

Few systems are built to operate under real-world constraints.

Even fewer are developed in environments where data, system constraints, and safety all matter at once.

That’s where we work.

At Zenseact (part of Volvo Cars), we build AI for autonomous driving and road safety. Our research spans machine learning, perception, planning and safety, with publications at CVPR, ICCV, ICML and CoRL.

We also contribute to the field through research and datasets, including the Zenseact Open Dataset (ZOD) — a large-scale multimodal dataset designed for real-world autonomous driving research.

👉 https://research.zenseact.com/

Why this role

You’ll do research. Proper research.

But You’ll Also Get The Opportunity To

• Work with large-scale, real-world driving data
• Understand how models behave outside controlled environments
• Explore how system and safety constraints shape AI
  
  
  

This changes how you approach problems — and how you evaluate solutions.

The research

Federated Reinforcement and Imitation Learning for Autonomous Driving

Autonomous vehicles generate vast amounts of experience, but most learning today remains centralized and limited in how it generalizes across environments.

At the same time, naïve reinforcement learning is difficult to apply in safety-critical systems like driving.

This project explores how federated reinforcement learning and imitation learning can be combined to enable collaborative, privacy-preserving, and safety-aware learning across fleets.

You Will Explore

• Federated learning architectures for policy learning without sharing raw sensor data
• Hybrid imitation and reinforcement learning methods for continuous improvement beyond expert demonstrations
• Learning under heterogeneous and non-IID data from diverse driving environments
• Safety-aware learning approaches (e.g. constraints, filtering, risk-aware objectives)
• Scalable distributed learning systems for real-world decision-making
• Evaluation using large-scale driving datasets and simulation
  
  
  

The work sits at the intersection of machine learning, reinforcement learning, and autonomous systems, contributing new methods for how real-world AI systems learn safely and efficiently.

About The Team

You’ll join a research team working across machine learning, perception, planning and safety for autonomous driving.

“We’re building an environment where deep thinking, open collaboration, and industrial relevance reinforce each other — giving PhD students both academic freedom and the opportunity to work on real-world problems.”

— Gabriel Campos, hiring leader and Mina Alibeigi, industrial supervisor

The setup

• 4-year industrial PhD within WASP (Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program)
• Collaboration with Uppsala University
• Based in Gothenburg, Sweden
  
  
  

As Part Of The Program, You Will

• Travel regularly to Uppsala University for courses and supervision
• Participate in WASP courses, workshops, and conferences
• Be part of a broader national research network
• Permanent employment (PhD + continued role after graduation)
  
  
  

You’ll work closely with researchers publishing in top venues and be part of a focused PhD cohort.

What we’re looking for

You don’t need to tick every box.

We’re Generally Looking For

• M.Sc. in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics or similar
• Experience working on open-ended problems (thesis, research, projects)
• A solid foundation in machine learning, mathematics, or related fields
• Ability to reason about complex systems
• Curiosity and willingness to learn
  
  
  

We’ve hired from physics, robotics, mathematics and beyond.

You don’t need to meet every requirement to apply. We care about how you think, how you learn, and how you approach problems. If you're unsure whether you're a match or not, you're probably closer than you think.

What you’ll get

• Work on a challenging and relevant AI problem
• Publish at leading conferences (CVPR, ICCV, ICML, CoRL)
• Access to large-scale multimodal data and compute
• Exposure to real-world constraints and systems
• A strong network across academia and industry
  
  
  

“You work on real research problems, but with access to data and systems you typically don’t have in academia — it changes how you approach your work.”

— Industrial PhD, Pauline Nässlander

Why it matters

Autonomous driving is one of the most complex applications of AI today.

Progress depends on better learning methods, better data, and better system understanding.

Apply

Please Include

• CV
• Transcripts
• Master’s thesis (or expected completion date)
• Optional: short motivation
  
  
  

Gothenburg, Sweden

Start: ASAP

Final note

If this problem sounds interesting — apply now, even without CV etc.! We'll remind you to cover the rest later.

FAQ

Q: Permanent or temporary role?

A: Permanent. First 4 years focus on PhD, followed by continued role at Zenseact.

Q: No publications yet — can I apply?

A: Yes. We care about research potential — strong thesis work or technical depth is enough.

Q: Need automotive experience?

A: No. We hire from ML, robotics, NLP, and related fields.

Q: Is funding guaranteed?

A: Yes, through WASP → https://wasp-sweden.org/

Q: Academic partner?

A: Uppsala University.

More About Zenseact

Our software makes a difference.

Using AI-based technology to create the ultimate driver support, we’re fighting to end car accidents and make roads safe for everyone. Every year, around 1,4 million people die in traffic while approximately 50 million people get injured. Many get disabled as a result of their injury. We can do better.

One purpose, one product.

We’re a software company dedicated to revolutionizing car safety. By designing the complete software stack for autonomous driving and advanced driver-assistance systems, we’re fighting to end car accidents and make roads safe for everyone. Zenseact was founded by Volvo Cars, and the teams are based in Gothenburg and Lund, Sweden and Munich in Germany. When we aim for zero accidents faster, we strive to speed up the transition to safe automation. This is essentially achieved by making cars updatable – like a computer or a phone. With regular software updates, a vehicle can be made safer long after its production. By accelerating improvement loops, shortening development cycles, and deploying high-capacity software quickly, we can make cars safer, and faster.

Culture with people at heart

To achieve our mission of saving lives and ending traffic accidents we must go where nobody has before. It requires us to venture into the unknown, pioneering new technology and pushing the frontier of autonomous driving. While there’s no denying our determination and expertise, we must stand united to succeed. By fostering a culture of support and enablement – a place of psychological safety where all of us can thrive – everything else will follow. We call this a people-at-heart culture. This culture means caring. It means the company cares about me, and we care about one another. It means sharing, so we give each other energy and have fun together. Our culture is also about belonging. It’s important to feel at home and that we can be ourselves at work. Finally, a people-at-heart culture means well-being. So, we enjoy the flexibility needed to be and do our best – at work and in life.

Zenseact works proactively to create a culture of diversity and inclusion, where individual differences are appreciated and respected. To drive innovation we see diversity as an asset, which means we value and respect differences in gender, race, ethnicity, religion or other belief, disability, sexual orientation or age, etc.

Interviews are held continuously, so we highly recommend that you submit your application at your earliest convenience.

One purpose, one product

We are a software company focused on transforming car safety. By developing a complete software stack for autonomous driving and advanced driver-assistance systems, we aim to eliminate car accidents and make roads safer for all. Founded by Volvo Cars, Zenseact operates globally, with teams in Gothenburg and Lund, Sweden; and Munich, Germany.