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Autonomous Vehicles, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Automotive

2027 Summer Intern, PhD, Software Engineer, Simulation

Mountain View, CAOnsiteInternshipJunior / Entry-level$85,000–$85,000 /yrPosted 1 month agoVisa sponsorship available

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Required skills

  • Robotics
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Python
  • TensorFlow
  • JAX
  • Machine Learning
  • Deep Learning
  • Transformer Models
  • TensorBoard
  • Version Control

Nice to have

  • Uncertainty measurement
  • model performance

Role summary

Waymo is seeking PhD interns for its Software Engineering team focused on autonomous driving technology. Interns will work on implementing and improving uncertainty-aware algorithms for transformer-based classifiers, ensuring end-to-end correctness of data and model implementations. The role requires strong programming skills in Python and experience with deep learning frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX, along with a solid understanding of machine learning fundamentals. Familiarity with software development best practices is also necessary. Preferred qualifications include experience with uncertainty measurement in deep learning and using data to enhance model performance. This is a hybrid onsite internship with competitive compensation.

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.

Software Engineering builds the brains of Waymo's fully autonomous driving technology. Our software allows the Waymo Driver to perceive the world around it, make the right decision for every situation, and deliver people safely to their destinations. We think deeply and solve complex technical challenges in areas like robotics, perception, decision-making and deep learning, while collaborating with hardware and systems engineers. If you’re a software engineer or researcher who’s curious and passionate about Level 4 autonomous driving, we'd like to meet you.

Waymo interns partner with leaders in the industry on projects that create impact to the company. We believe learning is a two-way street: applying your knowledge while providing you with opportunities to expand your skill-set. Interns are an important part of our culture and our recruiting pipeline. Join us at Waymo for a fun and rewarding internship!

You will:

  • Implement uncertainty aware algorithms that improve the performance of transformer-based multi-task classifiers
  • Implement the changes end-to-end, including eval
  • Ensure both data and model implementation are correct according to the experiment plan. Pay attention to details about the mechanics of the modeling setup
  • You have:

  • Currently enrolled in a PhD program in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, or a related quantitative field
  • Strong programming proficiency in Python and hands-on experience with deep learning frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, JAX)
  • Solid theoretical understanding of machine learning and deep learning fundamentals, including debugging transformer based models with TensorBoard metrics
  • Familiarity with software development best practices, including version control
  • We prefer:

  • Uncertainty measurement in deep learning model development
  • Hands-on experience using data to improve model performance, as opposed to only focusing on architectural model improvements
  • Note: This will be a hybrid onsite internship position. We will accept resumes on a rolling basis until the role is filled. To be in consideration for multiple roles, you will need to apply to each one individually - please apply to the top 3 roles you are interested in.

    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$85—$85 USD

    Sample Waymo interview questions

    • 1

      Design a data ingestion system

      system designmedium
    • 2

      Design a simulation-based regression detection system for code changes

      system designhard
    • 3

      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
    • 4

      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
    • 5

      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

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