PhD student for Research in Multi-Modal Perception & Fusion at Internet Scale

Life is always about becoming... Becoming means going on a journey to be the best version of our future selves. While we discover new things, we will face challenges, master them and grow beyond our individual limits.

Apply for a job at Mercedes-Benz and find your individual role and workspace to unleash your talents to the fullest. Empowered by visionary colleagues who share the same pioneering spirit. Joining us means becoming part of a global team that aims to build the most desirable cars in the world. Together for excellence.

Job ID: MER0003PAC We shape the future of mobility at Mercedes-Benz by developing autonomous and automated driving systems for highways and urban areas. Our teams are inspired by current trends, find the best solutions for our customers, and develop the latest and greatest technologies to tackle these challenges. Become part of an agile, innovative team that passionately works to make our vehicles even safer and more autonomous. We are looking for a talented, proactive, and dedicated colleagues to join our Sensor Perception & Fusion team in the Böblingen area, researching and promoting the technologies of tomorrow. Tasks and responsibilities You provide fundamental insights for our future Sensor Perception & Fusion system. This system uses data from cameras, lidar, and radar to form the basic of the environmental model, which describes other road users and infrastructure information

You research new, data-driven multi-sensor perception and fusion algorithms and architectures, leveraging existing vision language models to achieve optimal driving behavior

In doing so, you develop new approaches to adapt internet-scale trained vision language models (VLMs) to additional sensor modalities search as LiDAR and radar

You monitor current research in the field of sensor perception and fusion, publishing your contributions, and present them at conferences

You document your results in reports and regular present them to the Sensor Perception & Teams

The Promotion can begin from October 2025. The requirement for hiring is the supervision of the PhD project by a university lecturer. The PhD student is responsible for choosing his/her/their own supervisor.

Ideally, you bring the following: A completed Master's degree with excellent results in engineering, search as computer science, robotics, physics, or a related field

Excellent knowledge of state-of-the-art machine learning, such as transformer and attention concepts, and VLM architectures

Experience in applying the mentioned concepts to object perception and tracking, based on multimodal sensor data search as radar, lidar, and camera

Excellent and practical implementation skills in Python

Practical experience with Docker, Conda, PyTorch, and ML frameworks search as MMDetection

C++ programming skills are an advantage

Fluent English and German language skills

Personal Competences: High level of discipline, initiative, independence and commitment

Excellent communication and teamwork skills as part of a global team in a multicultural environment

Ability to understand existing problems and take a methodical, creative approach to solution design

Strong willingness to learn and share knowledge, for example, by mentoring students

Openness to questioning the state of the art and high motivation to delve deeply into a topic

Additional information: Would you like to write your doctoral dissertation in cooperation with Mercedes-Benz Group AG? We offer you an international network of experts, research materials, insights into our work and a personal mentor who will serve as your contact partner in addition to your doctoral advisor at your university. Please apply exclusively online and mark your application documents as ''relevant for this application' in the online form. Please find the criteria of employment ''here'. Citizens of countries outside the European Trade Union please send, if applicable, your residence / work permit. We particularly welcome online applications from candidates with disabilities or similar impairments in direct response to this job advertisement. If you have any questions, you can contact the local disability officer once you have submitted your application form, who will gladly assist you in the onward application process: SBV-Sindelfingen@mercedes-benz.com. Please understand that we do not accept paper applications and that there is no right to get your documents. If you have any questions regarding the application process, please contact HR Services by e-mail at myhrservice@mercedes-benz.com or by phone: 0711/17-99000 (Monday to Friday between 10 a.m. to 12 a.m. and 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.).

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