Program Manager, New Markets & Platforms

Waymo LLC; Sacramento (CA); Hybrid; USD 159,000 - 196,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus

Equity incentive

Company benefits

Job summary

Waymo LLC is seeking a seasoned Senior Program Manager for the SWQ Ops team to lead a 5-person group and oversee multi-organ initiatives. The role emphasizes cross-functional leadership, program governance, and agile execution in a hybrid work environment.

You will drive de-risking deployments, support market expansion, and partner with Engineering, SysEng, Simulation and Data Science to accelerate development of the Waymo Driver and related ML workflows.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in technical or business discipline.
• 7+ years of experience in Technical Operations, Program Management, or Quality Engineering.
• Proven ability to manage complex technical programs with Agile methodologies (e.g., Scrum).
• Experience supporting all phases of the machine learning development lifecycle.
• Ability to thrive in a high ambiguity, dynamic environment.
• People management experience.

Responsibilities

• Drive long-term forecasting and resource planning for programs spanning multiple orgs.
• Stand up new workflows and scale existing workflows for market expansions.
• Translate complex operations into scalable, reliable processes and provide high-quality insights to customers.
• Define program KPIs and SLAs and drive deployments with a global vendor workforce.
• Collaborate with Engineering to design and deploy ML/Gen-AI tools to improve issue discovery, triage, and quality assurance.

Skills

Leadership

Program management

Agile methodologies

ML lifecycle

Stakeholder communication

People management

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Scrum

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 Software Quality Operations (SWQ Ops) team is at the heart of ensuring the safety, reliability, and quality of the Waymo Driver. Our mission is to build an adaptable and scalable operation, increasingly powered by AI, to deliver the crucial insights necessary to confidently deploy and grow Waymo's autonomous vehicle service. This role follows a hybrid work schedule and reports to a SWQ Ops Triage Program Manager Team Lead.

This role will lead a team of 5 and requires prior leadership experience.

Role

Waymo is undergoing unprecedented growth, rapidly expanding into new cities and launching new vehicle platforms. SWQOps plays a critical role in this expansion, making it possible to scale safely and efficiently. We are on the front lines of:

• De-risking New Deployments: Through meticulous triage of driving events, issue discovery, and continuous field monitoring, SWQOps provides early warnings and critical insights. This "early intervention in RO issue detection" ensures operational resilience and safety, particularly in new and complex environments, which is critical as Waymo enters multiple new cities and ramps up platforms like Ojai.
• Enabling Market Expansion: Our team is deeply integrated into every stage of Waymo's market entry framework, from initial city evaluation (OK2Plan) to scaling operations (OK2Scale). We provide the necessary triage, data analysis, and quality assurance to unblock critical milestones, preventing slowdowns in market expansion velocity.
• Driving Engineering Velocity: By handling the vital work of performance evaluation, issue deep-dives, and data set curation, SWQOps collaborates heavily and allows Waymo's Engineering, SysEng, Simulation, and Data Science teams to focus on their core tasks of developing and improving the Waymo Driver.
• Data Flywheel: Supporting the development of a single, automated, end-to-end machine learning flywheel for the entire Waymo Driver. A successful flywheel will be the core engine for scaling our technology, enabling faster ODD expansion, quicker remediation of driving issues, and a significant reduction in the engineering effort required to maintain and improve the driver.

You WillDrive outcomes for programs that span multiple orgs.

• Drive outcomes for programs that span multiple orgs. Responsible for long term forecasting and resource planning.
• Be responsible for standing up new workflows and scaling existing workflows to support new market expansions. Translate complex human operations into scaled and reliable operations, bringing key insights to customers at highest quality.
• Communicate overall program status, risks and current priorities to stakeholders. Drive tradeoff decisions making across functions.
• Define program / workflow KPIs and SLAs. Drive high-quality outcomes through deployments with a global vendor workforce.
• Drive workflow transformation efforts to meet evolving business needs. Partner with Engineering to design, test, and deploy cutting-edge Machine Learning (ML) and Generative AI (Gen-AI) models and tools to drive step-change improvements in issue discovery & detection, triage efficiency, and quality assurance.

You Have

• Bachelor's degree in technical or business discipline
• 7+ years of experience in Technical Operations, Program Management, or Quality Engineering
• Proven ability to manage complex technical programs, including structuring project plans, identifying dependencies, and driving execution using Agile methodologies (e.g., Scrum)
• Increased competency in supporting all phases of the machine learning development lifecycle, from data preparation and training to validation, deployment, and continuous monitoring
• Ability to thrive in a high ambiguity, dynamic environment
• People management experience

We Prefer

• Undergraduate in technical degree preferred
• MBA or graduate operations experience preferred
• Experience within A / V space
• Experience with Lean / Six Sigma process improvement methodologies
• Experience working with offshore teams / multiple local operations hub

The expected base salary range for this full-time position across US locations is listed below.

• Salary Range$159,000—$196,000 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.