Senior Research Scientist, World Action Modeling

Mountain View, California, United StatesHybridFull TimeSenior$213,000–$263,000 /yrPosted 2 months agoVisa sponsorship available

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Role summary

Waymo AI Foundations is seeking a Senior Research Scientist specializing in World Modeling to advance autonomous driving capabilities. This role involves designing and implementing generative world action models to simulate future states and generate policies for embodied agents. You will develop scalable data pipelines, create robust evaluation strategies, and conduct cutting-edge research. The position requires a PhD or equivalent experience in deep learning research, with at least 5 years in Deep Learning and Generative Models, strong Python coding skills, and familiarity with ML frameworks like JAX, TensorFlow, or PyTorch. Experience with large-scale distributed training and various generative model domains is essential. Preferred qualifications include publications at top-tier conferences and experience with Reinforcement Learning in simulation.

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 mission of the Waymo AI Foundations team is to develop machine learning solutions addressing open problems in autonomous driving, towards the goal of safely operating Waymo vehicles in dozens of cities and under all driving conditions. As part of our work, we also initiate and foster collaborations with other research teams in Alphabet. AI Foundations areas that we are currently focusing on include reinforcement learning, learning from demonstration, generative modeling, Bayesian inference, hierarchical learning, and robust evaluation.

This role follows a hybrid work schedule and reports to a Staff Research Scientist / Tech Lead Manager.

You will:

Design and implement generative world action modeling solutions to simulate future world states / observations and generate policies for embodied agents (autonomous vehicles).

Develop and maintain scalable data pipelines to process data from multiple sources.

Design and implement evaluation strategies for world action models.

Study and analyze different behaviors of this model, such as scaling efficacy, downstream quality implications, model architecture design ablations, etc.

Conducting cutting-edge research and potentially communicating research findings to the wider academic community via technical blog posts, technical reports and/or publications.

Collaborate inclusively across Waymo/Alphabet to apply developed techniques to Waymo products.

You have:

PhD degree in Computer Science or a similar discipline, or an equivalent amount of deep learning research experience, with 5+ years of experience with Deep Learning and Generative Models.

Strong coding skills in Python and strong familiarity with major ML Frameworks (JAX, Tensorflow, Pytorch).

Strong familiarity with AI tools in day to day work.

Experience in large-scale distributed training and different forms of parallelism.

Experience in generative models for domains such as world models, images, videaos, 3D, human animation, traffic, and/or simulation, using techniques such as diffusion and/or autoregressive models.

We prefer:

Publications at top-tier conferences like CVPR/ICCV/ECCV/ICLR/ICML/NeurIPS/IROS/CoRL etc.

Substantial involvement in and contributions to high impact industry AI projects.

First-hand experience in, and direct contributions to training large world models / world-action models.

Familiarity with Reinforcement Learning in simulation environments.

In accordance with Washington state law, we are highlighting our comprehensive benefits package, which is available to all eligible US based employees. Benefits for this role include:

Health, dental, vision, life, disability insurance

Retirement Benefits: 401(k) with company match

Paid Time Off: 20 days of vacation per year, accruing at a rate of 6.15 hours per pay period for the first five years of employment

Sick Time: 40 hours/year (statutory, where applicable); 5 days/event (discretionary)

Maternity Leave (Short-Term Disability + Baby Bonding): 28-30 weeks

Baby Bonding Leave: 18 weeks

Holidays: 13 paid days per year

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.

Salary Range

$213,000—$263,000 USD

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