Technical Lead Manager, Machine Learning Runtime & Serving

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

Job summary

Waymo seeks a Senior Technical Lead Manager (TLM) ML Engineer in Mountain View to guide the technical vision of our core ML infrastructure. You will lead a high‑performing team delivering the next‑generation ML ecosystem spanning in‑vehicle inference and cloud serving for foundational models.

You will architect scalable runtime systems for edge and data center deployment, balancing real‑time latency with high throughput, and collaborate with ML researchers to optimize performance across hardware

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Experience architecting ML systems and infrastructure.
• People management and team-building experience.
• Strong production programming expertise.
• Experience optimizing ML software for GPUs/TPUs.
• Hands-on experience with distributed backend systems.

Responsibilities

• Guide the technical vision of core ML infrastructure and grow a high-performing team of engineers.
• Architect scalable, high-performance ML runtime systems for edge and data-center domains.
• Navigate trade-offs to meet real-time latency and throughput requirements.
• Advance the transition to a JAX-native runtime architecture and modify ML compilers/runtimes (OpenXLA/PjRT, TensorRT).
• Partner with ML researchers to analyze workloads and unlock performance gains.
• Design profiling/benchmarking infrastructure to identify and fix bottlenecks across the ML stack.

Skills

People management

Production programming

Distributed backend systems

ML systems architecture

GPU/TPU optimization

Education

B.S./M.S. in CS/EE/DL

Tools

OpenXLA/PjRT

TensorRT

ONNX Runtime

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.

Waymo is seeking a senior Technical Lead Manager (TLM) Machine Learning Engineer to guide the technical vision of our core ML infrastructure. In this role, you will actively grow and manage a high‑performing team of 6 engineers to deliver Waymo’s next‑generation ML ecosystem. This critical work encompasses both the in‑vehicle inference engine and the cloud‑based serving infrastructure for our foundational models. You will architect scalable, high‑performance ML runtime systems that operate across two extreme domains: the highly constrained edge compute environment of autonomous vehicles and our large‑scale, offboard data centers.

Key Responsibilities

• Guide the technical vision of our core ML infrastructure while actively growing and managing a high‑performing team of 6 engineers to deliver Waymo’s next‑generation ML ecosystem, encompassing both the in‑vehicle inference engine and the cloud‑based serving infrastructure for our foundational models.
• Architect scalable, high‑performance ML runtime systems that operate flawlessly across two extreme domains: the highly constrained edge compute environment of autonomous vehicles and our large‑scale, offboard data centers.
• Navigate complex engineering trade‑offs, driving feature development that seamlessly balances the strict, real‑time latency and memory limits of onboard execution with the high‑throughput, highly concurrent demands of fleet‑scale cloud serving.
• Spearhead the strategic transition of core ML workloads to a JAX‑native runtime architecture, which includes actively extending and modifying underlying ML compilers and runtimes (e.g., OpenXLA/PjRT, TensorRT).
• Partner across organizational boundaries with world‑class ML researchers in Perception and Planning to deeply analyze system‑level workloads and unlock massive performance gains through hardware‑aware compute optimizations.
• Drive systemic performance excellence by designing advanced profiling and benchmarking infrastructure to identify, triage, and eliminate bottlenecks across the entire end‑to‑end ML software stack.

Required Qualifications

• B.S. or M.S. in CS, EE, Deep Learning or a related field.
• People management experience, with a proven track record of recruiting, mentoring, and guiding high‑performing teams of senior engineers.
• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience architecting, building, and scaling complex ML systems and infrastructure.
• Strong production programming expertise.
• Proven track record of optimizing ML software to maximize the performance of hardware accelerators (e.g., GPUs, TPUs, or custom silicon).
• Hands‑on experience developing distributed backend systems that are low‑latency, highly concurrent, and fault‑tolerant at scale.

Preferred Qualifications

• Ph.D. in CS, EE, Deep Learning or a related field.
• Deep expertise in modifying and extending ML software stacks, including compilers, runtimes, or inference engines (e.g., OpenXLA/PjRT, TensorRT, ONNX Runtime, TVM).
• Strong background in building and scaling LLM serving systems, leveraging advanced distributed inference and performance optimization techniques.
• Deep expertise in edge computing and automotive ML deployment, navigating strict power, thermal, and real‑time latency constraints to optimize and deploy mission‑critical models on resource‑constrained embedded hardware.

Salary & Benefits

Salary Range: $251,000 – $310,000 USD. Waymo employees are also eligible to participate in Waymo’s discretionary annual bonus program, equity incentive plan, and a generous company benefits program, subject to eligibility requirements.