Staff Equipment Engineer
Role summary
Waymo is seeking a Staff Equipment Engineer to invent and develop processes, materials, and systems for cutting-edge hardware technologies. This role requires 8+ years of experience in automation or equipment engineering, with expertise in hardware debugging across electrical, mechanical, and software interfaces, including PLC logic and programming languages like C# or Python. The engineer will manage hardware projects with international vendors, drive automation strategies, and oversee factory bring-up and process optimization for mass production. A BS or MS in a relevant engineering field is required. Preferred qualifications include experience with optical/sensor systems and advanced control systems.
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 a specialized manufacturing engineer, you invent and develop processes, materials, systems, and components that enable transformative, cutting-edge technologies in Waymo hardware. Your technical background may come from a variety of disciplines including electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, materials science, chemical engineering, chemistry, physics, or other fundamental sciences. You bring process, materials and precision assembly expertise in the fields of advanced coatings, electro-optics, optical assembly, opto-mechanics, semiconductor fabrication processes, MEMS devices, advanced semiconductor packaging, PCBA, SMT, robotics, automation, mechatronics. You often work on components that require micro & nanometer level precision with high yields and stability over the full operating range of automotive environments. In addition to aiding creation of new technologies, you bridge the gap between prototype and pilot builds, contributing to designs with your experience in novel manufacturing processes and DFx (Design for Excellence). You utilize your knowledge in statistical analysis, data science and visualization to derive insights and drive improvements. You work with both internal teams and suppliers to help develop best in class scalable processes and shape technologies that go into Waymo products.
This role follow a hybrid work schedule and reports to the Staff Manufacturing Engineer.
You will:
You have:
We prefer:
Travel Requirements:
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.
Sample Waymo interview questions
- 1
Design a data ingestion system
system designmedium - 2
Longest Substring with Two Distinct Characters Find the longest substring with at most two distinct characters. Input: s = "ccaabbb" Output: 5 Explanation: The substring "aabbb" contains exactly two distinct characters and has a maximum length of 5.
codingmedium - 3
Alien Dictionary Order Derive the alien dictionary order from a sorted list of alien words. Input: words = ["z","x","z"] Output: "" (Empty String) Explanation: The letter 'z' cannot come before 'x' and then suddenly after 'x', creating a cycle and making the dictionary invalid.
codingmedium - 4
Palindrome After Deleting One Character Determine if a string can be a palindrome after deleting at most one character. Input: s = "abc" Output: FALSE Explanation: Deleting any single character leaves either "ab", "bc", or "ac", none of which result in a valid palindrome.
codingmedium
Sign up for a personalized interview prep pack tailored to this role.
