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.
Waymo is rapidly scaling its driving technology to new cities and geographies. A continual focus on operational efficiency, compliance, and safety is critical to this mission. The Driver Refinement & Validation organization builds the technology and tools to rapidly discover, iterate, and mitigate complex vehicle behaviors while scaling performance in a data-driven way.
The PUDOs (Pick-up/Drop-off) team is directly responsible for perfecting how our fully autonomous car executes pullovers—improving key driving scenarios like passenger pick-ups and drop-offs, parking, and deliveries. As we expand, our goal is to build the advanced signals and software necessary to seamlessly scale the Waymo Driver's performance across these critical real-world touchpoints in every new market.
In this role, you will report to a Technical Lead Manager.
You will:
- Work closely with Technical Leads and Technical Lead Managers in the org to design and implement horizontal solutions to solve behavioral driving across PUDOs (pick up & drop off)
- Build quantitative evaluation techniques of on-road performance to drive data-driven development
- Work closely with partners across Product and the Onboard stack
- Provide mentorship for junior engineers on the team
- Develop foundational frameworks that help advancement of the Waymo Driver's capabilities
- Directly contribute to solving some of the most challenging driving situations in the long tail
You have:
- PhD, Masters, or Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics
- 8+ years of Software Engineering experience in complex systems
- Evaluation experience, contributing to scalable eval workflows and building metrics for ML models and analyzing large datasets
- High quality API design with an eye towards evaluation and data-driven techniques
- Experience with working and solving design problems that span multiple components
- Ability to collaborate within and across teams
- Two or more years of management experience
We prefer:
- AV or Robotics experience
- Experience with Machine Learning models in production systems
- Coding proficiency in C++, Python, and SQL
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
- PhD, master’s, or bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or Robotics
- 8 or more years of software engineering experience in complex systems
- Experience contributing to scalable evaluation workflows, building metrics for machine learning models, and analyzing large datasets
- Experience with high-quality API design focused on evaluation and data-driven techniques
- Experience solving design problems spanning multiple components
- Ability to collaborate within and across teams
- Two or more years of management experience
- Autonomous vehicle or robotics experience
- Experience with machine learning models in production systems
- Coding proficiency in C++, Python, and SQL
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.
