Technical Lead Manager, Simulator Efficiency

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 Simulator Team at Waymo builds state-of-the-art simulations of realistic environments for testing and training the Waymo Driver. Your team will be a diverse, and collaborative group of machine learning (ML) engineers, software engineers and data scientists. We develop industry-leading simulation solutions using advanced ML algorithms that measure and enhance the performance of the Waymo Driver. We achieve those goals by jointly modeling the real world, including realistic agents (vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists), roads, traffic control systems, and weather conditions, and the full sensor suite including camera, Lidar and radars.

To increase the fidelity, scalability and controllability of our simulations,we employ the latest ML technologies such as large language models, foundational world models, and reconstructive methods trained on large-scale datasets with both generative and reconstructive technologies, as well as traditional rendering approaches.

In this hybrid role, you will report to a Senior Staff Engineering Manager.

You will:

• Innovate and Develop: Join our world-class research engineering team to drive innovation in ultra-realistic sensor data and perception simulation for autonomous vehicles. You will develop the latest simulation technologies using 3D Gaussian Splatting, foundational models for sensor data, and traditional 3D graphics.
• Lead and Scale: Lead the deployment and scaling of sensor simulation to solve some of Waymo's hardest challenges. You will work in a highly cross-functional environment, collaborating with research, systems engineering, and other teams to accelerate company objectives.
• Transfer Research to Production: Work closely with Waymo's foundational AI research team to turn state-of-the-art research into scalable and production-ready solutions.

You Have:

• MS in Computer Science, Machine Learning (ML), Robotics, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Technical Leadership: 3+ years of experience leading technical teams, with a focus on promoting a collaborative and innovative environment.
• Industry Experience: 8+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 5+ years of experience in machine learning-based 3D Reconstruction techniques such as 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) and Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF), or traditional 3D reconstruction and rendering pipelines.
• Technical Fluency: Fluency in Python and C++, with experience developing ML software using frameworks like PyTorch, TensorFlow, and Jax/Flax.

We Prefer:

• Experience processing or simulating Lidar, camera, or MIMO radar sensor data.
• Experience with autonomous systems, including robotics or autonomous vehicles (L4, L3+).
• Experience integrating ML models into a highly distributed production system using C++.
• Experience training large-scale models on GPU/TPU clusters.
• Management experience.

#LI-Hybrid

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