Director, AI Foundations & Data for Foundation Models

Waymo; California (MO); Hybrid; USD 349,000 - 431,000; Full time

Job summary

Waymo is pursuing advanced Foundation World Model research to advance autonomous driving. This hybrid role reports to the Senior Director of AI Foundations and leads a team of researchers and engineers focused on data-centric AI methods and scalable training strategies.

The role requires a PhD or Master’s in a relevant field, strong RL or foundation model background, proven publications, and leadership experience to deliver real-world impact within a collaborative, cross-functional environment.

Qualifications

• PhD or Master’s in CS, ML, or Robotics with 5+ years in Reinforcement Learning or Foundation Models.
• Publications, technical blogs, or significant open-source contributions demonstrating impact.
• Experience leading teams of researchers and engineers to deploy real-world AI impact and hands-on adaptability.

Responsibilities

• Own data recipes for Foundation World Model pre-training and post-training.
• Lead data quality practices: clustering, filtering, de-duplication, long-tail data mining, memorization, etc.
• Manage a team of scientists building data flywheels for pre-training data scaling and RL recipe tuning.
• Collaborate with broader research to refine data-centric evaluation methods.
• Share recipes and best practices with engineering and research teams to accelerate collective know-how.

Skills

Reinforcement Learning

Foundational Models

Team Leadership

Education

PhD or Master’s in CS/ML/Robotics

Job description

Waymo is pursuing advanced Foundation World Model research to advance autonomous driving. This hybrid role reports to the Senior Director of AI Foundations and leads a team of researchers and engineers focused on data-centric AI methods and scalable training strategies.

The role requires a PhD or Master’s in a relevant field, strong RL or foundation model background, proven publications, and leadership experience to deliver real-world impact within a collaborative, cross-functional environment.