Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company with the mission to be the world's most trusted driver. Since its start as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has focused on building the Waymo Driver—The World's Most Experienced Driver™—to improve access to mobility while saving thousands of lives now lost to traffic crashes. The Waymo Driver powers Waymo’s fully autonomous ride-hail service and can also be applied to a range of vehicle platforms and product use cases. The Waymo Driver has provided over ten million rider-only trips, enabled by its experience autonomously driving over 100 million miles on public roads and tens of billions in simulation across 15+ U.S. states.
As the Technical Lead Manager for Rider Growth, you will build, lead, and inspire a high-performing, cross-functional engineering squad (comprising backend, full-stack, and mobile engineers) focused on driving sustainable rider acquisition, activation, retention, and lifetime value (LTV).
The team will build features that educate and onboard new riders to driverless technology, design subscription and loyalty programs that drive daily commuter habits, and leverage machine learning and economics to optimize dynamic promotions that shape passenger demand to match fleet availability.
You will:
Recruit, mentor, and grow a diverse, inclusive, and highly skilled engineering team. Foster a culture of high ownership, rapid iteration, and technical craftsmanship.
Partner with Product Management, User Experience (UX) Design, and Data Science, define the strategy and execute a roadmap aimed at accelerating rider growth and retention.
Lead the technical strategy for rider onboarding, focusing on shrinking the time-to-value (TTV) from app download to the first driverless trip. Build smooth UX flows that solve high cognitive trust barriers, educate riders on vehicle safety, and optimize physical pickup/drop-off logistics.
Architect and scale rider retention frameworks, including subscription services, commuter packages, and loyalty programs that incentivize frequent, habitual riding.
Collaborate with ML scientists and economists to design and scale highly reliable, low-latency promotional engines. Build backend systems that distribute personalized, budget-capped promotions to shape rider demand and maximize incremental ridership.
Champion a highly quantitative, data-driven engineering culture. Drive standard-setting experimentation practices, ensuring the team runs robust A/B tests, interprets statistical outcomes accurately, and rapidly integrates learnings back into the product.
Oversee the scalability, latency, and reliability of your team's services. Ensure seamless, high-performance integrations with Waymo's core routing, fleet dispatch, pricing engines, and billing ledgers.
You have:
4+ years of experience directly managing and scaling high-performing software engineering teams, with a strong track record of mentoring senior and staff-level engineers.
6+ years of hands-on software development experience building highly scalable, distributed backend systems (Go, Java, C++, or Python) and/or high-performance B2C mobile applications (iOS/Android).
Deep, practical experience running systematic product experiments (A/B testing, multivariate testing) with a strong grasp of statistical significance, experimental design, and cohort analysis.
Fluency in using data analytics tools (SQL, Python/Pandas, Tableau, etc.) to diagnose user drops, analyze funnel health, and identify new conversion opportunities.
The ability to thrive in a fast-paced, evolving environment, managing multiple parallel product experiments while maintaining absolute engineering craftsmanship.
We prefer:
Extensive experience scaling B2C products by driving measurable improvements across the Acquisition, Retention, and LTV (Lifetime Value) lifecycle.
Proven success architecting ML-driven systems for real-time offer surfacing and ranking, leveraging techniques like Multi-Armed Bandits to optimize incentives at scale.
Outstanding communication and collaboration skills. You can seamlessly translate high-level business and economic goals into rigorous technical requirements and align stakeholders across the business.
#LI-Hybrid
The expected base salary range for this full-time position across US locations is listed below. Actual starting pay will be based on job-related factors, including exact work location, experience, relevant training and education, and skill level. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for the role location or, if the role can be performed remote, the specific salary range for your preferred location, during the hiring process.
Waymo employees are also eligible to participate in Waymo’s discretionary annual bonus program, equity incentive plan, and generous Company benefits program, subject to eligibility requirements.
Skills Required
- 4+ years of experience managing software engineering teams
- 6+ years of software development experience in distributed backend systems or mobile applications
- Experience running systematic product experiments
- Fluency in data analytics tools
- Ability to manage multiple product experiments
Waymo Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Waymo and has not been reviewed or approved by Waymo.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is considered strong for full‑time technical roles, aligning with top‑tier AV/Big Tech benchmarks. Employer materials also emphasize competitive pay with eligibility for bonuses and equity as part of total rewards.
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Healthcare Strength — Coverage spans medical, dental, vision, mental‑health resources, onsite wellness centers, and counseling, with specialized programs such as menopause and transgender medical advocacy. Dependents are included, indicating depth across core health needs.
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Parental & Family Support — Offerings include fertility and family‑forming assistance, parental and baby‑bonding leave, caregiver and elder‑care support, and backup childcare. These programs are positioned to support families through multiple life stages.
Waymo Insights
What We Do
Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company with a mission to make it safe and easy for people and things to move around. With the Waymo Driver, we can improve the world’s mobility while saving thousands of lives. Waymo reaches out to candidates from official channels only (e.g. directly from @waymo.com email addresses, or through our recruiters or sourcers who are noted as such on LinkedIn). We do not contact candidates about career opportunities through instant messaging apps like Telegram, email addresses from domains other than waymo.com (such as Gmail addresses), direct messages on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, or text messages. Visit waymo.com to check out our official job listings.
