Director, Foundation Model Data Recipes

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 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.

In this hybrid role, you will report to the Senior Director, AI Foundations.

You will:

• Participate in Waymo’s Foundation World Model pre-training and post-training by owning the data recipe

• Invest in data best practices - best practices around clustering, filtering, de-duplication, long-tail data mining, memorization, etc. Also help lead a team of research engineers to build the data flywheel to enable the above from Waymo’s massive driving data

• Integrate emerging research from the broader community to do rigorous ablations and promising data research techniques. Focus on managing a team of scientists that would work on scaling ladders for pre-training, data mix optimizations and RL recipes (preferences) for post-training.

• Engage with the wider research community on best practices around data centric evaluation creation and refinement

• Partner with engineering and research teams across Waymo to share recipes, techniques, and post-training best practices to accelerate our collective know-how

You have:

• PhD or Masters in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a similar technical field; with 5+ years of industry or post-doc research experience in Reinforcement Learning or Foundation Models

• Demonstration of original contributions to the field through high-impact publications (ArXiv, peer-reviewed conferences like NeurIPS/ICLR/CVPR), technical blog posts, or significant open-source contributions

• Experience leading teams of research scientists and engineers to deploy real world impact in AI - including showing real world impact. Ability to be hands-on when needed to adapt models as and when needed.

We prefer:

• Extensive experience working with data and recipes for large scale foundation models

• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or Robotics, with a research focus on Data centric AI, Reinforcement Learning, Foundation Models, or Multimodal learning

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

$349,000—$431,000 USD