Regional Autonomous Fleet Readiness Manager - Central

Waymo; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 130,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Waymo LLC seeks a senior operations leader to scale regional EV fleet platforms, optimize field deployments, and drive fleet health across the Central Region. You will mentor diagnostics teams, translate technical issues into standard work, and manage complex vendor relationships with a data-driven approach.

The role emphasizes KPI-driven governance, NPI-to-field deployment expertise, and strategic collaboration with supply, engineering, and field operations to sustain high uptime and safety

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Business, Operations, Fleet or Logistics, Automotive & Fleet Technology.
• 7+ years in large-scale operations, logistics, or hardware manufacturing with EV focus.
• 5+ years regional Fleet & Maintenance oversight; lead with KPI discipline.
• Experience taking a vehicle platform from NPI to field deployment.
• Proven KPI tracking for fleet performance, downtime, and asset utilization.
• Vendor management with SLAs and audits; data-driven accountability.
• Analytical rigor in telemetry, DTCs, dashboards and fleet metrics.
• Project leadership across multiple high-stake technical initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Lead regional fleet integration and scale across Central Region markets.
• Provide leadership and mentorship to Diagnostic Technicians; set priorities.
• Bridge Hardware/Electrical Eng and Field Ops; convert failures to standard work.
• Manage SLAs with third-party partners and ensure staffing/training.
• Deploy automated systems and tooling; report fleet health to leadership.
• Coordinate with Supply Management on parts lifecycle and availability.

Skills

Fleet operations

Logistics management

NPI & scaling

KPI tracking

Vendor management

Project leadership

Analytical telemetry review

Cross-site coordination

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Business, Operations, Fleet or Logistics, Automotive & Fleet Technology

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.

Waymo Operations exists to deliver the Waymo Driver to the world. We are a global team building and scaling the world's first and leading autonomous fleet and operations platform. From component sourcing to end customer management, we enable and create value for Waymo through scaled and orchestrated deployment of the Waymo Driver. At Waymo, we are dedicated to building a culture that promotes collaboration and celebration. We value our team members' unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences and support and encourage all team members to share their ideas to help Waymo better serve the communities in which we operate.

Join the Market Operations Team in a role pivotal to our end-to-end performance. As the architect of our 'top-of-funnel' supply metrics, you will own the critical path from platform readiness to supply-demand equilibrium, ensuring fleet health directly powers service availability. We are seeking a dual-focus expert who can translate technical nuances into operational uptime, while mentoring internal teams and holding external partners to elite standards across a multi-market portfolio.

In this role, you will report to the Head of Market Operations - Central Region.

You will:

• Regional Fleet Integration & Scalability: Lead the strategic scale of new EV platforms across multiple Central Region markets, prioritizing fleet uptime and platform maturity through rigorous oversight of field integration, high-voltage stabilization, and sensor-health protocols.
• Technical & Diagnostic Leadership: Provide dotted-line leadership and technical oversight to a multi-site team of Diagnostic Technicians, setting daily priorities and providing technical mentorship to ensure high-quality execution of complex powertrain and AV-stack troubleshooting.
• Maintenance-to-Ops Liaison: Serve as the primary conduit between Hardware/Electrical Engineering and Field Ops, translating systemic technical failures into actionable Standard Work (SW) and driving Root Cause Analysis (RCA).
• Vendor Management & Workforce Readiness: Demonstrated ability to manage complex service-level agreements (SLAs) while ensuring third-party partners are appropriately staffed and technically trained to support multi-platform EV operations. Experience auditing vendor "Standard Work" and safety certifications is essential.
• Operational Governance & Automation: Champion the deployment of automated systems and advanced tooling to maximize depot throughput; provide executive-ready reporting on fleet health and maturity to Global Leadership.
• Supply & Asset Integration: Partner with Supply Management to oversee critical component lifecycles and "just-in-time" part availability, ensuring zero-downtime for mission-critical EV hardware.

You have:

• Educational Foundation: Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Business, Operations, Fleet or Logistics, Automotive & Fleet Technology
• 7+ Years of Industry Experience: Proven track record in large-scale commercial operations, logistics, or hardware manufacturing, with at least 3 years specifically focused on Electric Vehicle (EV) platforms.
• Multi-Site Oversight: 5+ Years overseeing regional Fleet & Maintenance workflows with proven ability to manage repair-order performance, fleet productivity & availability and overall operation effectiveness.
• NPI & Scaling Success: Demonstrated experience taking a vehicle platform or complex hardware product from the NPI phase through to stable, commercial-scale field deployment.
• Performance Tracking (KPI’s) Proven track record for monitoring fleet performance KPI’s such as vehicle turnaround time, downtime percentages, per unit maintenance cost and regional asset utilization.
• Vendor Management Excellence: Proven ability to manage complex service-level agreements (SLAs) and drive vendor accountability through data-driven performance audits.
• Analytical Rigor: Advanced ability to interpret telemetry data, diagnostic codes (DTCs), dashboarding and fleet metrics to identify operational gaps and mitigate market-level risks and optimize overall fleet health.
• Project Leadership: Experience managing multiple high-stakes technical projects simultaneously in a high-velocity environment (e.g., retrofits, software-defined hardware updates).

We prefer:

• AV Industry Fluency: Direct experience with autonomous vehicle ecosystems, specifically the integration of compute/sensing suites with EV powertrains.
• Process Engineering (WOS/Lean): Experience implementing or refining formal operating systems (e.g., Waymo Operating System or Lean Manufacturing) to reduce operational drag.
• High-Voltage Safety: Advanced knowledge of EV safety standards and the ability to design/manage safe workspaces for high-voltage e-battery service.
• Change Management Leadership: Skilled in navigating organizational restructuring and leading teams through the "fluid" environment of a scaling startup.
• Relationship Building: Ability to build and manage relationships, engage in-person, and foster cross-functional communication and alignment.
• Strategic Decision-Making: Skilled in analytical and critical thinking, problem-solving, risk assessment, management, and long-term planning and prioritization.

Travel requirement:

• 25% of the time

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

$130,000—$160,000 USD