Senior Staff Software Engineer, Model Post Training

SupportFinity™; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 281,000 - 356,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary annual bonus program

Equity incentive plan

Generous company benefits program

Job summary

Waymo is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer specializing in Model Post Training to advance post-training methods for LLMs used in autonomous driving. You will collaborate with research to translate breakthroughs into production-ready systems and provide technical leadership across ML, infra, and data teams.

The role focuses on raising the bar for training, evaluating, and deploying LLMs within the autonomous driving tech stack, shaping direction amid evolving research and real-world

Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience developing post-training methods for LLMs.
• Extensive experience with deep learning frameworks and large-scale model training.
• Ability to operate effectively under ambiguity and set direction amid evolving constraints.
• Translate research insights into production-ready post-training pipelines.
• Experience applying LLMs in safety-critical domains (e.g., autonomy, robotics).
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• Post-training for instruction following and CoT thinking in LLMs for autonomous driving.
• Collaborate with research teams to turn advances into production-ready systems.
• Provide technical leadership to influence ML, infra, and data teams.
• Raise the technical bar for training, evaluation, and deployment of LLMs in the stack.

Skills

Post-training methods for LLMs

Ambiguity management

Translating research into production

Excellent communication and teamwork

Experience applying LLMs in safety‑crs

Tools

PyTorch

JAX

Job description

Senior Staff Software Engineer, Model Post Training

Waymo | Posted Mar 2

Full-time

Unknown

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.

You Will

• Post-training for instruction following and CoT thinking: Develop and apply methods to enhance the instruction following and CoT abilities of LLM models targeting autonomous driving applications. This may include fine-tuning strategies, reinforcement learning techniques, or novel approaches to improve LLM’s ability to solve complex driving tasks, make decisions, and interact with dynamic environments.
• Collaborate deeply with research teams asking the right technical questions, translating research advances into production-ready systems, and shaping joint technical direction.
• Provide technical leadership to influence senior engineers and researchers across ML, infra, and data teams.
• Raise the technical bar for how Waymo trains, evaluates, and deploys LLM models in the autonomous driving technical stack.

You Have

• Demonstrated experience developing post-training methods for LLM models
• Extensive experience with deep learning frameworks (e.g. PyTorch, JAX) and large-scale model training.
• A track record of operating effectively under ambiguity, setting direction amid rapidly evolving research and technical constraints
• The ability to translate research insights into production-ready post-training pipelines and systems
• Experience applying large language models or foundation models in complex, safety-critical domains (e.g., autonomy, robotics, or other high-reliability systems)
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills

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

$281,000—$356,000 USD

About the company

Waymo