Foundation Model Data, Software Engineer

Waymo; Kirkland (WA); Hybrid; USD 213,000 - 263,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, vision, life, disability insurance

401(k) with company match

20 days of vacation per year

Sick Time: 40 hours/year

28-30 weeks maternity leave

13 paid holidays per year

Job summary

Waymo is seeking a candidate to join their AI Foundations team in Kirkland, Washington. This hybrid role entails building and operating petabyte-scale data systems and machine learning pipelines crucial for the Waymo Driver's development.

The ideal candidate will hold a degree in Computer Science or a related field, possess strong proficiency in Python and C++, and have experience with large-scale data infrastructure. The position offers a competitive salary and comprehensive benefits.

Qualifications

• Undergraduate degree in a relevant field or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience building or maintaining large-scale data pipelines or ML infrastructure.
• Familiarity with deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow).

Responsibilities

• Build and operate petabyte-scale data systems for foundation model development.
• Wield large-scale compute and frameworks to train and deploy complex models.
• Partner with experts to transform model innovations into product improvements.

Skills

Proficiency in Python

Proficiency in C++

Strong hands-on SWE skills

Experience with large-scale data pipelines

Education

Undergraduate degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics or similar

Tools

Flume

Spark

Borg

Kubeflow

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 more than 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 a Principal Research Scientist.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate the petabyte‑scale data systems and ML pipelines at the heart of Waymo's foundation model development
• Shepherd cutting‑edge foundation models from research prototypes to robust components within the Waymo Driver
• Develop automated, high‑performance infrastructure to ensure the dependable and efficient rollout of data solutions at the forefront of Waymo foundation model program
• Wield large‑scale compute and frameworks like Flume/Beam and JAX to process massive datasets for training, evaluating and deploying complex models
• Drive significant leaps in the speed, reliability, and efficiency of the end‑to‑end ML development lifecycle
• Partner with experts in AI Foundations, ML, and Platform to transform model innovations into tangible improvements to Waymo's product

Qualifications

• Undergraduate degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, similar technical field of study, or equivalent practical experience
• Proficiency in Python and C++
• Experience building or maintaining large‑scale data pipelines or ML infrastructure (e.g., Flume, Spark, Borg, Kubeflow)
• Strong hands‑on SWE skills, able to drive development of large, complex shared codebases

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing and building distributed systems or MLOps platforms (e.g., model versioning, experiment tracking, CI/CD for ML)
• Familiarity with one of the modern deep learning frameworks (e.g., Pytorch, JAX, Tensorflow)
• Experience in AV planning and related research
• Prior work in an industrial or research setting developing methodologies for data‑centric improvement of ML models
• Previous data curation experience and multimodal experience

Benefits

• Health, dental, vision, life, disability insurance
• Retirement Benefits: 401(k) with company match
• Paid Time Off: 20 days of vacation per year, accruing at a rate of 6.15 hours per pay period for the first five years of employment
• Sick Time: 40 hours/year (statutory, where applicable); 5 days/event (discretionary)
• Maternity Leave (Short‑Term Disability + Baby Bonding): 28-30 weeks
• Baby Bonding Leave: 18 weeks
• Holidays: 13 paid days per year

Compensation

The expected base salary range for this full‑time position across U.S. locations is listed below.

$213,000 – $263,000 USD

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.