Example aspects of the present disclosure are directed to systems and methods for learning data augmentation strategies for improved object detection model performance. In particular, example aspects of the present disclosure are directed to iterative reinforcement learning approaches in which, at each of a plurality of iterations, a controller model selects a series of one or more augmentation operations to be applied to training images to generate augmented images. For example, the controller model can select the augmentation operations from a defined search space of available operations which can, for example, include operations that augment the training image without modification of the locations of a target object and corresponding bounding shape within the image and/or operations that do modify the locations of the target object and bounding shape within the training image.