Research Scientist, Human-AI Perception and Interaction Research - PhD New College Grad 2026

at Nvidia

📍 Santa Clara, United States

USD 168,000-264,500 per year

JUNIOR

✅ On-site

Tech Stack
Tag name is followed by "@" symbol and proficiency level value. About proficiency levels:

1-2 — basic awareness. Minimal hands-on experience, and a rudimentary understanding of the technology's purpose;

3-6 — daily use. Comfortable and regular usage, capable of handling common tasks and challenges related to the technology;

7-9 — you are an expert, you can teach others, you know all the pitfalls and tricks;

10 — exceptional knowledge, comprehensive understanding, and adeptness in all aspects of the technology, including advanced problem-solving. Think twice before claiming or demanding such level.

AI @ 3 Deep Learning @ 2 GPU @ 3 LLM Machine Learning @ 3 PyTorch @ 3 Python @ 5 Robotics @ 3 Rust @ 5

Details

NVIDIA's Human Performance and Experience (HPX) team at NVIDIA Research is seeking a research scientist passionate about advancing AI in gaming, robotics, and related fields. The team bridges vision science, human-computer interaction (HCI), and human-robot interaction (HRI) to create systems that perceive, learn, and collaborate with people safely and effectively. The role involves collaboration with research scientists, engineers, external researchers, and product engineering teams.

Responsibilities

Propose, research, prototype, and test innovative research ideas.
Publish research at top conferences and patent novel inventions.
Collaborate with research team members and external researchers.
Mentor interns.
Create working interactive demonstrations to showcase research ideas.
Participate in technology transfer with NVIDIA engineers as research ideas progress toward products.

Requirements

Ph.D. or equivalent research experience in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Cognitive Science, or a related field.
Excellent publication record in top-tier conferences, such as SIGGRAPH, CHI, HRI, ICRA, NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, CoG, and ETRA.
Experience studying human behaviors in application domains such as gaming, driving, or human-robot interaction.
Proficiency with Python, Rust, and/or C++.
Experience with AI model training and evaluation frameworks such as PyTorch.

Preferred Qualifications

A public portfolio, including repositories, open-source contributions, notebooks, packages, or technical blog posts with code.
Experience with multi-node, multi-GPU training and inference workflows.
Familiarity with and interest in modern deep learning models, including large-scale, multimodal foundation models such as large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs).
Experience applying human behavior models to machine learning applications, or applying machine learning to understand or model human behavior.

Compensation and Benefits

Base salary: USD 168,000–264,500 per year, determined by location, experience, and the pay of employees in similar positions.
Eligible for equity and benefits.
Applications will be accepted at least until January 25, 2026.

NVIDIA is committed to fostering a diverse work environment and is an equal opportunity employer.