Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Driver Refinement & Validation

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.

Driver Refinement and Validation’s (DRV) mission is to build upon the high-quality ML Driver developed by Driver Intelligence, refining its performance to improve autonomous driving in specific, complex real-world contexts and problem areas (e.g., Ride-Hailing contexts). It aims to ensure that the Waymo Driver always computes safe, compliant, comfortable, and useful plans. As an Engineer in DRV, you will bridge the gap between cutting-edge machine learning and real-world vehicle performance, engineering the validation and onboard systems that ensure the autonomous vehicle reliably executes intelligent and predictable maneuvers.

You will:

• Develop next-generation, ML-powered systems that enhance the capabilities of the ML driver and accelerate the rapid scaling of Waymo’s business

• Fine-tune, adapt, and benchmark state-of-the-art generative models to improve autonomous vehicle perception, motion prediction, and trajectory planning

• Write high-quality, scalable, and thoroughly tested code to bring cutting-edge ML into production

• Partner with world-class engineers and product managers to deliver safe and smooth autonomous vehicle behaviors

You have:

• MS in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience

• 8+ years of industry experience deploying, evaluating, and maintaining ML-based systems in real-world, production environments

• Proficient programming skills in Python and/or C++, coupled with strong analytical and debugging abilities

• Expertise with modern deep learning frameworks, such as JAX or PyTorch

We prefer:

• Experience in deep learning, reinforcement learning, and ML systems

• Domain expertise in solving prediction, behaviors, motion planning, or related robotics problems

• ML post-training experience

• Prior industry experience (e.g. internships) in applied ML or software development

• Publications in top-tier conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICRA, IROS, RSS, CoRL, ACL, or EMNLP)

The expected hourly rate for this full-time position is listed below. Interns are also eligible to participate in the Company’s generous benefits programs, subject to eligibility requirements.

Hourly PhD Pay $251,000—$310,000 USD