Senior Software Engineer, Perception Verification

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's Systems Engineering team works together to blend software and hardware systems in groundbreaking new ways. We set the high performance standards that ensure our vehicles run smoothly and keep passengers safe, then design and perform the tests that validate that performance. We're looking for talented teammates who’ll help us maintain strong teamwork and are passionate about driving results.

In this hybrid role, you will report to a Technical Lead Manager, Perception Verification.

You will:

• Develop measurement approaches and metrics to characterize performance and safety of our perception system against a diverse set of requirements


• Validate perception system analysis methodologies to assess their applicability to the requirements, communicate benefits and limitations to partner teams


• Integrate and deploy metrics and broader system characterization reports on fleet-wide data


• Accelerate verification processes by automating highly nuanced system characterization procedures


• Stand up durable data analysis and data mining pipelines to discover new faults and rare events

You have:

• 5+ years of experience in Software Engineering for robotics, autonomous vehicles, computer vision, or other complex hardware/software systems


• Experience testing such systems at all levels from unit tests to comprehensive end-to-end test campaigns.


• Solid understanding of physics, geometry, bayesian statistics, and machine learning


• Proficiency in Python and C++


• Ability to learn and utilize new frameworks quickly, employing AI tools or otherwise


• Ability to write clean, readable, and well-tested code, setting a strong example for code hygiene and maintainability

We prefer:

• 8+ years industry experience


• Proficiency in SQL


• Experience building numerical algorithms or scientific software


• Experience building or evaluating machine learning models in production


• Experience building and testing autonomous systems


• Experience using LLMs and VLMs in production environments

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—$270,000 USD