Research Scientist, AI Foundations — VLMs & 3D Vision

Waymo; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 213,000 - 263,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus

Equity plan

Company benefits

Job summary

Waymo is seeking researchers to tackle world understanding challenges using Vision-Language Models (VLMs), 3D reconstruction, and generative modeling on a large scale. You will prototype ideas with Waymo's driving data, scale solutions with engineers, and share findings across Waymo and Alphabet, with potential publications.

Required: advanced degree (MS/PhD) in CS/AI/ML, 1–3+ years in related fields, and strong Python/C++ ML software skills with familiarity in JAX/TensorFlow/PyTorch.

Qualifications

• Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, or in a similar discipline.
• 1-3+ years of experience in a related field.
• Expert in Foundational VLMs, Computer Vision or learning-based 3D reconstruction methods (3DGS, NeRF).
• Strong ML software engineering skills in Python/C++ with rapid prototyping ability.

Responsibilities

• Solve fundamental and applied research problems related to world understanding using VLMs, generative modeling and 3D reconstruction at large scale.
• Prototype and iterate on various research ideas using Waymo's internal driving data
• Scale and productionize world understanding solutions in collaboration with engineering teams across Waymo
• Present research findings to a wide audience within Waymo and Alphabet, with the possibility of publishing results to the research community

Skills

VLMs

3D reconstruction

Python

C++

Machine Learning

Education

Master's or PhD in Computer Science/AI/ML

Tools

JAX

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Job description

Waymo is seeking researchers to tackle world understanding challenges using Vision-Language Models (VLMs), 3D reconstruction, and generative modeling on a large scale. You will prototype ideas with Waymo's driving data, scale solutions with engineers, and share findings across Waymo and Alphabet, with potential publications.

Required: advanced degree (MS/PhD) in CS/AI/ML, 1–3+ years in related fields, and strong Python/C++ ML software skills with familiarity in JAX/TensorFlow/PyTorch.