Lead Staff Scientist – Foundation Models & Data Recipes

Waymo; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 251,000 - 310,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, vision

401(k) with company match

Paid Time Off 20 days/year

Sick Time 40 hours/year

Maternity Leave 28-30 weeks

Baby Bonding Leave 18 weeks

13 paid holidays

Job summary

Waymo is seeking a seasoned researcher to drive data-centric AI for Foundation Models. You will lead data recipes for pre-training and post-training, guiding a team of research engineers and collaborating across Waymo’s engineering and research groups.

Applicants should have a PhD or Masters with 3+ years in data-centric AI, RL or foundation models, plus strong publications or open-source contributions and expertise in PyTorch/JAX/TensorFlow.

Qualifications

• PhD or Masters in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or similar with 3+ years of research experience.
• Demonstrated contributions to the field through publications, blog posts, or open-source work.
• Proficiency in ML frameworks (PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow).

Responsibilities

• Own the data recipe for Waymo’s Foundation Model pre-training and post-training.
• Lead science on clustering, filtering, de-duplication, long-tail data mining, memorization, etc.
• Tech-lead a team of research engineers to build the data flywheel from Waymo’s data.
• Integrate emerging research with rigorous ablations and data techniques for pre-training and post-training.
• Engage with the wider research community on data-centric evaluation practices.
• Collaborate with engineering and research teams to share recipes and post-training best practices.

Skills

Data-centric AI

Reinforcement Learning

Foundation Models

ML frameworks (PyTorch/JAX/TensorFlow)

Education

PhD or Masters in CS/ML/Robotics

Tools

PyTorch

JAX

TensorFlow

Job description

Waymo is seeking a seasoned researcher to drive data-centric AI for Foundation Models. You will lead data recipes for pre-training and post-training, guiding a team of research engineers and collaborating across Waymo’s engineering and research groups.

Applicants should have a PhD or Masters with 3+ years in data-centric AI, RL or foundation models, plus strong publications or open-source contributions and expertise in PyTorch/JAX/TensorFlow.