Senior Staff Engineer, Agentic AI Engineering

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

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary annual bonus

Equity incentive plan

Generous benefits package

Job summary

Waymo is seeking a data-minded software engineer and data scientist to advance its Planner Evaluation work, evaluating the quality and impact of the Onboard software stack. You will help develop automated evaluation frameworks and metrics for non-deterministic AI agents, and scale complex evaluation problems.

This hybrid role reports to an Engineering Director. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to deploy production-grade AI systems and influence the direction of autonomous driving

Qualifications

• Strong background in AI/ML and autonomous agents.
• Experience designing, building, evaluating, and deploying AI solutions into production.
• Proven ability to lead technical initiatives across teams.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and deploy production-grade agentic AI systems to solve evaluation challenges.
• Develop robust evaluation frameworks and objective metrics for AI agents.
• Automate scaling of evaluation problems for Waymo's Onboard software stack.

Skills

AI/ML expertise

Agent-based AI

Multi-agent orchestration

LLMs with external tools/APIs

Software engineering leadership

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

PhD in CS preferred

Tools

C++

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 Planner Evaluation team works on one of the key challenges in autonomous driving: measuring and improving the quality of the software that drives the car. We are looking for experienced data-minded software engineers and data scientists to help us improve how we characterize and evaluate changes to the Onboard software stack (Planner, Perception, etc). If you are passionate about autonomous vehicles and how to use rich, complex data to drive decision making, this is the role for you!

In this hybrid role, you will report to an Engineering Director.

You will:

• Design, build, and deploy production‑grade agentic AI systems to solve complex, open‑ended evaluation challenges.
• Develop robust, automated evaluation frameworks and objective metrics to continuously measure the accuracy, safety, and reliability of non‑deterministic AI agents.
• Automate the building and scaling of the hardest eval problem inhibiting Waymo's scale.

You have:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Proven technical leader with a track record of designing, building, evaluating, and deploying novel agent‑based AI solutions into production.
• Deep expertise in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, with heavy, hands‑on experience building autonomous agents, multi‑agent orchestration systems, and integrating LLMs with external tools/APIs.
• Extensive experience (typically 7+ years) in software engineering, with a significant focus on architecting and building large‑scale, complex systems.
• Proven ability to define technical strategy, influence senior leadership, and drive execution across multiple teams in ambiguous and rapidly evolving domains.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences.

We prefer:

• PhD in Computer Science or a related field, with a specialization in AI/ML or a related area.
• Experience with agentic frameworks, knowledge graphs, and reasoning engines.
  Proficiency in C++ and experience with building production‑grade services.
• Familiarity with autonomous vehicle simulation, testing, or evaluation domains.
• Familiarity with Google's or Waymo's internal AI/ML platforms and infrastructure.

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

$251,000 - $310,000 USD