<div><p>Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company with the mission to be the worlds most trusted driver. Since its start as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has focused on building the Waymo Driver—The Worlds Most Experienced Driver™—to improve access to mobility while saving thousands of lives now lost to traffic crashes. The Waymo Driver powers Waymo One, a fully autonomous ride-hailing service, and can also be applied to a range of vehicle platforms and product use cases. The Waymo Driver has provided over one million rider-only trips, enabled by its experience autonomously driving tens of millions of miles on public roads and tens of billions in simulation across 13+ U.S. states.</p></div><p>The mission of the Waymo Applied Research team is to develop machine learning solutions addressing open problems in autonomous driving, towards the goal of the 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.</p> <p>In this hybrid role you will report to a Director of Research</p> <p><strong>You will:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Conduct cutting-edge research and development adapting Foundation Models to AV Planning via post-training techniques: RL, reasoning, preference alignment, inference-time scaling, data and reward function development</li> <li>Partner within and across organizations to land disruptive and innovative tech in production</li> <li>Work with a variety of state-of-the-art <a href="https://waymo.com/blog/2024/10/ai-and-ml-at-waymo">Foundation Models</a> </li> <li>Leverage our industry-leading datasets and state-of-the-art safety framework to land fleet-wide improvements in model performance</li> </ul> <p><strong>You have:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Masters degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, similar technical field of study, or equivalent practical experience</li> <li>Proficiency in Python</li> <li>Familiarity with one of the modern deep learning frameworks (e.g. Pytorch, JAX, Tensorflow)</li> <li>Prior work in an industrial or research setting developing methodologies for post-training for LLM or robotics applications</li> </ul> <p><strong>We prefer:</strong></p> <ul> <li>PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, similar technical field of study, or equivalent practical experience</li> <li>Track record of publications in top-tier conferences or leading open source projects in the related fields</li> <li>Strong hands-on SWE skills, able to design, implement, and extend large scale data and evaluation pipelines</li> <li>Experience in AV planning and related research</li> </ul><div><div><div><p><span>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. </span></p> <p><span>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. </span></p></div><div>Salary Range</div><div><span>$170,000</span><span>—</span><span>$216,000 USD</span></div></div></div>