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.
The Perception team at Waymo builds technology that powers the Waymo Driver. Our models allow the Waymo Driver to perceive the world around it, make the right decision for every situation, and deliver people safely to their destinations. We conduct research to address real-world problems and collaborate with research teams at Alphabet. We have access to millions of miles of driving data from a diverse set of sensors, allowing ML practitioners like you to develop multi-modal models and techniques at scale.
You will report to our Director of Engineering in our Perception Organization.
You will:
- Develop sensor-fusion foundation models for the Waymo Driver which can run on the car and provide a temporal-spatial understanding of the surrounding environment
- Solve large-scale, multi-stage training of sensor fusion foundation models with millions of miles of driving data under limited labeling budget partnering with Waymo infrastructure teams
- Develop solutions for frequently updating the models and minimizing time-to-impact from observing to addressing an issue
- Optimize end-to-end latency from model training/update to model deployment
- Drive and accelerate collaborations between Perception teams, between Perception and AI Foundation teams, and partner with the teams working on Planning, Simulation and seek collaboration with Alphabet's research teams
You have:
- Master's degree or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field
- 10+ years of experience in ML model development, and you have 4+ years experience with large-scale vision, video, or multi-modal foundation model development and their integration in end-to-end models
- 6+ years of experience in ML-driven production systems that develops models with large-scale data, training, evaluation, and deployment
- 6+ years of experience in a technical leadership role leading technical teams and setting technical directions in large ML Engineering organizations
- 3+ years of experience with computer vision models, or LLMs, or vision language models
- Proficiency in C++, Python, and modern deep learning toolkits like PyTorch or JAX
- Passion to lead engineering excellence and efficient model development through flywheel automation, while having direct technical experience in model quality development to achieve our goals
We prefer:
- Experience in multi-modal LLM pretraining and fine-tuning, and their infrastructure
- Experience in model distillation techniques and compute optimization
- Familiarity with end-to-end models and their development challenges
#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
- Master's degree or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field
- 10+ years of experience in ML model development
- 4+ years experience with large-scale vision, video, or multi-modal foundation model development
- 6+ years of experience in ML-driven production systems
- 6+ years of experience in a technical leadership role in ML Engineering organizations
- 3+ years of experience with computer vision models, or LLMs, or vision language models
- Proficiency in C++, Python, and modern deep learning toolkits like PyTorch or JAX
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.
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