Senior Software Engineer, Perception Future Sensing Platforms

Waymo; Mountain View (WY); On-site; USD 213,000 - 263,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus program

Equity incentives

Generous benefits

Job summary

Waymo's Perception team builds the software that powers the Waymo Driver, enabling safe autonomous driving with sensor data from lidar, cameras and radar. This role focuses on evolving a portable, hardware-agnostic perception stack across platforms, writing design docs, and testing changes with a strong emphasis on robust software.

The position follows a hybrid work schedule and reports to a Technical Lead Manager.

Qualifications

• BS in Computer Science, Robotics, or a similar technical field or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong experience programming in C++ with robust and efficient code.
• Strong software architecture skills.
• Experience with sensor data processing (Lidar, camera, or Radar).
• Experience with building, integrating, debugging and evaluating ML-based systems.

Responsibilities

• Work with a creative team to bring up Perception software on new hardware platforms (vehicles, sensors, compute).
• Evolve software to abstract differences between sensor hardware, write design docs, gather feedback, implement changes and test.
• Prototype and run de-risking experiments for next-generation Perception software stack for portability to new sensor hardware.
• Maintain and evaluate sensor hardware options and write analyses with high-level recommendations.

Skills

C++

Software architecture

Sensor data processing

ML-based systems

Education

BS in Computer Science or Robotics

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 Perception team at Waymo builds technology that powers the Waymo Driver. Our software allows the Waymo Driver to perceive the world around it, make the right decision for every situation, and deliver people safely to their destinations. We conduct research to address real-world problems and collaborate with research teams at Alphabet. We have access to millions of miles of driving data from a diverse set of sensors, enabling software engineers like you to develop multi-modal models and techniques at scale.

Our mission is to build a stable foundation for a high-level Perception pipeline and the overall self-driving system. We act as the crucial interface between Waymo's hardware teams and the rest of the self-driving engineering organization, defining sensor requirements, providing critical feedback to hardware teams, and abstracting away system complexities.

The Multi-Platform Team's purpose is to abstract away superfluous differences between various sensor hardware and encapsulate hardware-specific logic so that downstream Perception is as portable as possible. Our work allows a single parameterized Perception software stack to run on all sensor hardware platforms, to remain easily maintainable across N platforms with much less than N times the effort, and to rapidly adapt to new platforms. We bring up the overall Perception software stack on new sensor and vehicle platforms.

This role follows a hybrid work schedule and reports to a Technical Lead Manager.

You will:

• Work with a creative team of people who are responsible for the bring-up of Perception SW on new hardware platforms (vehicles, sensors, compute).
• Evolve existing SW to abstract away superfluous differences between various sensor hardware and encapsulate hardware-specific logic, by writing design docs, gathering feedback, implementing the change and testing it and monitoring its continued health and maintaining it during its lifespan.
• Rapidly prototype and run de-risking experiments for the next-generation Perception SW stack that is designed to be more portable to the new sensor HW.
• Maintain and run evaluations of existing or hypothetical new sensor hardware to help make decisions on sensor HW options. Write up analyses that summarize high-level recommendations using the evidence from these evaluations.

You have:

• BS in Computer Science, Robotics, similar technical field of study, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong experience programming in C++ with robust and efficient code
• Strong software architecture skills
• Experience with sensor data processing (Lidar, camera, or Radar)
• Experience with building, integrating, debugging and evaluating ML-based systems

We prefer:

• MS or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, similar technical field of study, or equivalent practical experience
• Experience with autonomous vehicles (L4) or ADAS systems (L2/L3)
• Experience with bring-up of new sensors or vehicle platforms

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

$213,000-$263,000 USD