Part-Time Student - Robotics Engineer - Ames, IA or Urbandale, IA

Your Responsibilities

As a Part-Time Student Robotics Engineer for John Deere located in Ames, IA, or Urbandale, IA, you will:

• Design, develop, and optimize robotics, perception, and AI technologies that enable automation and autonomy solutions for John Deere products.
• Develop production-quality software and algorithms for deployment on real-time edge-compute platforms.
• Research, develop, and evaluate computer vision, machine learning, and deep learning algorithms for perception and decision-making systems.
• Develop and train multi-modal AI models using camera imagery, machine telemetry, CAN signals, and other sensor data.
• Develop synthetic data generation and simulation workflows to improve model robustness and reduce data collection costs.
• Collaborate with CVML, robotics, software, systems, and product engineering teams to integrate perception capabilities into John Deere platforms.

What Skills You Need

• Pursuing a Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD degree in: Computer Science, Robotics, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Applied Mathematics; other fields may apply.
• Strong programming skills in Python and/or C++.
• Experience with machine learning and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.
• Experience with computer vision libraries such as OpenCV.
• Understanding of machine learning fundamentals, neural networks, and model development workflows.
• Experience working with real-world data through academic projects, internships, research, or personal projects.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills.
• Ability to work independently while contributing effectively within a multidisciplinary team.
• Graduation date of May 2027 or later.
• Available to work during the academic year (16-20 hours weekly).
• Available to work during the summer semester (30-40 hours weekly).
• Must be registered as a full-time student at a U.S/local accredited university/college
• Cumulative GPA of 2.8 or above.
• Must be able to be onsite at the work location in Urbandale, IA during the summer semester on a daily basis OR onsite at the John Deere Ames Research Park during the school year. NOTE: Relocation assistance is not provided.

What Makes You Stand Out

• Hands-on experience developing computer vision, machine learning, perception, or robotics solutions.
• Experience with foundation models, generative AI, large vision-language models, or multimodal learning.
• Experience with 3D perception, structure-from-motion, neural rendering, Gaussian Splatting, NeRFs, SLAM, or mapping technologies.
• Strong mathematical background in linear algebra, probability, optimization, and statistics.
• Passion for innovation, autonomous systems, robotics, and solving real-world customer problems.