Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Perception

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 Perception team builds the system which learns the spatial-temporal representation and their semantic meanings of the surrounding environment of the self-driving car, i.e., the system that “perceives” the world around the car. We work jointly with downstream teams on the optimization and integration into the Waymo Driver. We conduct our own research to address real-world problems and collaborate with research teams at Alphabet. We have access to millions of miles of driving data from a diverse set of sensors, enabling engineers like you to (1) develop methods for efficiently and continuously learn from large scale real-world data, (2) develop models and model training at scale, (3) analyze real-world behavior and develop systems for handling the complexities of interacting with the real-world, and (4) optimize models for our onboard and offboard hardware.

In this hybrid role you will report to a Technical Lead Manager within the Semantics subgroup in our Perception org.

You will:

• Architect and train large-scale, onboard ML perception models that are instrumental to ensuring vehicle safety and regulatory compliance.


• Drive cross-functional collaboration to engineer robust, high-reliability training pipelines within a dynamic, rapid-delivery environment.


• Leverage deep computer vision expertise to design novel, custom architectures from first principles to solve complex perception challenges.


• Contribute to a vibrant and positive team culture where diverse skill sets and backgrounds are valued. Support the growth of junior engineers and foster a high-performing, collaborative team environment.

You have:

• Masters in Computer Science or a similar discipline, or an equivalent amount of deep learning experience


• 3+ years experience in Machine Learning and/or Computer Vision


• Experience with Python


• Experience with ML frameworks like PyTorch or JAX

We prefer:

• Experience in training and deploying ML models on the edge


• Experience in Autonomous Vehicle or related industries


• PhD Degree in Machine Learning, Robotics, Computer Science or a similar discipline


• Publications at top-tier conferences like CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICLR, ICML, ICRA, IROS, RSS, NeurIPS, AAAI, IJCV, PAMI


• Experience with C++

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

$213,000 - $263,000 USD