Autonomous Driving ML Engineer — Scene Understanding

Waymo LLC; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

Hybrid work model

Onsite meals & snacks

Fitness centers & wellness programs

Paid time off & leave

Job summary

Waymo LLC is seeking a Machine Learning Engineer in DRV to bridge cutting-edge ML with real-world vehicle performance. You will own features for Scene Understanding from data to onboard launch, curate large driving data sets, and iteratively improve model calibration and robustness for new geographies.

You will design multi-task heads, build rigorous evaluations, and integrate models into the onboard stack with safe fallbacks.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience shipping ML models to production, including training, offline evaluation, and deployment (L4: 2+ yrs; L5: 4+ yrs, or a PhD plus 2+ yrs)
• Cross-stack problems spanning data, model and systems/serving boundaries
• Strong data mining and data engineering to build large-scale batch pipelines
• Rigorous evaluation instincts: metric design, error analysis and slicing, A/B or staged rollout
• Proficiency in Python with a modern DL framework (JAX, TensorFlow, or PyTorch) and production C++
• Experience with transformer or temporal models (GRU/RNN), multi-task learning, and model calibration/uncertainty
• AV/Robotics experience, especially perception (detection, classification, tracking)
• TPU/accelerator performance work; exporting models for onboard/edge inference
• Labeling-pipeline and supervision design; autolabeling or synthetic data
• Builds internal tools (visualization, triage, experiment tracking) that accelerate the team

Responsibilities

• Bridge ML with real-world vehicle performance in validation and onboard systems
• Own ML features for Scene Understanding end to end: data → model → eval → onboard launch
• Mine and curate large-scale driving data (real and simulated) for training and evaluation
• Design, train, and iterate on multi-task model heads; improve calibration and generalization
• Build rigorous evaluation: metrics, slicing, side-by-sides, staging launches
• Integrate models into onboard stack (C++), with safe heuristics and map-contradiction handling
• Triage real driving events, diagnose root causes, propose fixes with cross-team collaboration

Skills

Data mining

Data engineering

Python (DL frameworks)

C++ production

Transformer/temporal models

Multi-task learning

Model calibration/uncertainty

Cross-stack generalist

Education

BS/MS/PhD in CS, EE, Robotics, ML or related

Tools

Beam/Flume/Spark

Job description

Waymo LLC is seeking a Machine Learning Engineer in DRV to bridge cutting-edge ML with real-world vehicle performance. You will own features for Scene Understanding from data to onboard launch, curate large driving data sets, and iteratively improve model calibration and robustness for new geographies.

You will design multi-task heads, build rigorous evaluations, and integrate models into the onboard stack with safe fallbacks.