Software Engineer, ML

About The Company
Waymo is a pioneering autonomous driving technology company dedicated to transforming mobility and enhancing safety on the roads. Originating from the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has consistently advanced its mission to become the world's most trusted driver. The company develops the Waymo Driver, an autonomous driving system that powers its fully autonomous ride-hail service and can be integrated into various vehicle platforms and use cases. With over ten million rider-only trips completed and more than 100 million miles driven on public roads across over 15 states, Waymo is at the forefront of autonomous vehicle innovation. The company's commitment to safety, reliability, and continuous improvement positions it as a leader in the autonomous driving industry.
About The Role
The Area Technical Lead for the Waymo machine learning flywheel plays a critical role in architecting and optimizing the data and model lifecycle that underpins the Waymo Driver's performance. This position involves designing automated, data-driven processes to incorporate every mile driven into a self-improving loop, enhancing the safety, efficiency, and capabilities of autonomous vehicles. The successful candidate will collaborate closely with infrastructure, modeling, evaluation, and cross-functional teams to develop scalable solutions for data collection, curation, labeling, model training, validation, and deployment. Reporting directly to the Distinguished Engineer, Foundation Models, this role demands strategic thinking, technical expertise, and leadership to drive innovation and operational excellence in machine learning systems.
Qualifications

• Master's degree or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field
• 10+ years of experience in machine learning model development
• 2+ years of experience with large-scale vision, video, or multi-modal foundation model development and integration
• 6+ years of experience in ML-driven production systems involving large-scale data, training, evaluation, and deployment
• 6+ years of technical leadership experience leading ML engineering teams and setting strategic directions
• Proven expertise in large-scale machine learning, including pre-training, post-training, and validation processes
• Experience in architecting and implementing scalable ML flywheels for mission-critical applications
• Track record of improving model quality through systematic data scaling and curation
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence and coordinate across disciplines

Responsibilities

• Design and implement automated processes to incorporate every autonomous mile into the self-improvement loop for the Waymo Driver
• Develop and enable a data flywheel supporting scalable pre-training, targeted post-training, and simulation validation
• Create and maintain modeling flywheels that efficiently utilize data to generate, validate, and deploy updated models with minimal manual intervention
• Coordinate efforts across data, infrastructure, modeling, and validation teams to accelerate data impact and system velocity
• Establish tools and metrics to monitor data quality and its influence on model performance
• Formulate strategies for integrating diverse data sources, including third-party and synthetic data, into the improvement pipeline
• Drive innovation to enhance model performance, scalability, cost-efficiency, and engineering velocity
• Lead initiatives to improve overall Driver quality and system robustness through data and model enhancements

Benefits

• Competitive salary range of $332,000 to $421,000 USD, commensurate with experience and location
• Participation in Waymo's discretionary annual bonus program and equity incentive plan
• Comprehensive benefits package including health, dental, vision, and wellness programs
• Opportunities for professional growth and development within a leading autonomous vehicle company
• Collaborative and innovative work environment focused on cutting-edge technology and safety
• Flexible work arrangements where applicable

Equal Opportunity
Waymo is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive environment for all employees. We value diversity and do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. We encourage applicants of all backgrounds to apply and participate in our hiring process.