ML Engineer, Perception Foundation Model

Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company with the mission to be the 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 One, a fully autonomous ride-hailing service, and can also be applied to a range of vehicle platforms and product use cases. The Waymo Driver has provided over one million rider-only trips, enabled by its experience autonomously driving tens of millions of miles on public roads and tens of billions in simulation across 13+ 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.

You Will

• Develop and train perception foundation models for autonomous driving
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deploy models across various parts of the Waymo stack
• Advance research in vision-language modeling for perception
  
  

You Have

• In-depth knowledge of designing and training large scale models and multi-modal applications
• Strong problem-solving skills to tackle open challenges
• Experience in applying deep learning models for perception
• Track record of publications in top-tier conferences in the related fields
  
  

We Prefer

• PhD or strong track record of execution in computer science, statistics, mathematics, physics, or another
• Experience in training vision-language models (VLM) or multimodal models for perception related tasks
• Related experience in VLM and LLM
  
  

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

$170,000—$216,000 USD