Staff ML Engineer, Foundation Models

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

Job summary

Waymo, the leader in autonomous driving technology, is seeking a senior member of the AI Foundations team to connect large-scale foundation models with production systems and collaborate across teams.

The role focuses on adapting foundation models to new sensors, platforms, and production requirements, delivering reliable, scalable solutions that advance Waymo's mission to improve mobility with safety at the core.

Qualifications

• Experience building large-scale systems.
• Proven ability to solve complex system problems.
• Strong track record delivering through large-scale collaborations.

Responsibilities

• Connect large-scale foundation models with production systems.
• Adapt foundation models to new sensors, platforms, and production requirements.
• Collaborate across teams to land foundation models on next-gen platforms.

Skills

Large-scale systems

Complex system problems

Large-scale collaboration

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 mission of the Waymo AI Foundations team is to develop machine learning solutions addressing open problems in autonomous driving, towards the goal of safely operating Waymo vehicles in dozens of cities and under all driving conditions. As part of our work, we also initiate and foster collaborations with other research teams in Alphabet. AI Foundations areas that we are currently focusing on include reinforcement learning, learning from demonstration, generative modeling, Bayesian inference, hierarchical learning, and robust evaluation.

This role follows a hybrid work schedule and reports to a Director of AI Foundations.

You will:

• Work on connecting large-scale foundation models with production systems.
• Adapt our foundation models to new sensors, new platforms, and new production requirements.
• Collaborate extensively with other teams to land foundation models to our next-gen platforms.

You have:

• Experience in building large-scale systems
• Track record of solving complex system problems
• Track record of successful deliveries through large-scale collaborations

We prefer:

• Experience in LLM/VLM related foundation models or systems
• Experience with foundation model post-training

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