Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Maneuvering Tech

Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Maneuvering Tech at Waymo — Mountain View, CA, US

  • Company: Waymo
  • Location: Mountain View, CA, US
  • Employment type: Full-time
  • Salary: $251,000–$310,000 a year
  • Posted: 2026-06-11

About this role

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.

Driver Refinement and Validation’s (DRV) mission is to build upon the high-quality ML Driver developed by Driver Intelligence, refining its performance to improve autonomous driving in specific, complex real-world contexts and problem areas (e.g., Ride-Hailing contexts). It aims to ensure that the Waymo Driver always computes safe, compliant, comfortable, and useful plans. As an Engineer in DRV, you will bridge the gap between cutting-edge machine learning and real-world vehicle performance, engineering the validation and onboard systems that ensure the autonomous vehicle reliably executes intelligent and predictable maneuvers.

You will:

  • Develop next-generation, ML-powered systems that enhance the capabilities of the ML driver and accelerate the rapid scaling of Waymo’s business
  • Fine-tune, adapt, and benchmark state-of-the-art generative models to improve autonomous vehicle perception, motion prediction, and trajectory planning
  • Write high-quality, scalable, and thoroughly tested code to bring cutting-edge ML into production
  • Partner with world-class engineers and product managers to deliver safe and smooth autonomous vehicle behaviors

You have:

  • MS in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
  • 8+ years of industry experience deploying, evaluating, and maintaining ML-based systems in real-world, production environments
  • Proficient programming skills in Python and/or C++, coupled with strong analytical and debugging abilities
  • Expertise with modern deep learning frameworks, such as JAX or PyTorch

We prefer:

  • Experience in deep learning, reinforcement learning, and ML systems
  • Domain expertise in solving prediction, behaviors, motion planning, or related robotics problems
  • ML post-training experience
  • Prior industry experience (e.g. internships) in applied ML or software development
  • Publications in top-tier conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICRA, IROS, RSS, CoRL, ACL, or EMNLP)

The expected hourly rate for this full-time position is listed below. Interns are also eligible to participate in the Company’s generous benefits programs, subject to eligibility requirements.

Hourly PhD Pay

$251,000—$310,000 USD

Apply on Waymo's site

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