Machine Learning Engineer (Entry Level)

About This Role

Tesla is hiring Machine Learning Engineers to work on Autopilot and Full Self-Driving — the most ambitious real-world AI deployment in the automotive industry. You will train models on petabytes of real-world camera data and see your work deployed in millions of vehicles.

Job Overview

• Job Title: Machine Learning Engineer (Entry Level)
• Company: Tesla
• Location: Palo Alto, CA / Austin, TX / Fremont, CA / Seattle, WA / New York, NY
• Job Type: Full-time
• Experience Level: Entry-level (0–2 years)
• Salary Range: $38–$54/hr
• Posted Date: 2026-06-01
• Application Deadline: 2026-07-01

Role Context

Tesla's Autopilot team moves at extreme pace — models trained this week ship to vehicles within weeks. Entry-level MLEs are placed directly on perception, planning, or data pipeline teams and contribute to production training runs from the start. There are no rotations; you are on the team from day one.

Key Responsibilities

• Train and evaluate computer vision and perception models for real-world autonomous driving
• Build data curation and labeling pipelines to improve training dataset quality
• Implement model architectures for object detection, depth estimation, or scene understanding
• Run ablation experiments and analyze failure modes in edge-case driving scenarios
• Optimize model inference for Tesla's custom FSD chip hardware
• Work with simulation environments to validate model behavior before fleet deployment

Requirements & Skills

• Bachelor's or Master's in CS, Electrical Engineering, or a related field (2024–2025 grad)
• Hands-on experience with computer vision or deep learning projects in PyTorch
• Understanding of object detection, segmentation, or tracking architectures
• Comfort with large-scale data processing and Linux-based development environments
• Strong C++ or Python coding ability; CUDA experience is a plus
• High tolerance for iteration speed and direct, engineering-focused culture

Benefits & Work Conditions

• $38–$54/hr with Tesla stock and performance bonus
• Fully onsite role — fast-paced, in-person engineering culture
• Free EV charging at Tesla facilities
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance
• Employee discount on Tesla vehicles and products

Who Should Apply

Recent graduates who want to work on real-world autonomy, can handle a demanding onsite culture, and want to see their ML work deployed to physical vehicles at scale. Tesla is not for everyone — it rewards people who thrive under speed and high expectations.

About the Company

Tesla is an electric vehicle and clean energy company building the world's most advanced driver assistance and autonomous driving systems. Its Autopilot and FSD teams process and train on more real-world driving data than any other organization in the world.

How to Apply

Apply via Tesla Careers. The interview process is direct and technical: a coding screen, a computer vision or ML design problem, and a culture fit discussion. Tesla hires fast when it finds the right candidate.