2026 Summer Intern, MS/PhD, Software Engineer, Planner Selection

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.

Reinforcement Learning. Specifically, this role will include experiments to address issues like: Sim2real gap, Reward formulation, model interpretability, and safety verification and evaluation. Our intern will work closely with Waymo's foundation models, as well as classical motion planning teams. The focus of the role is on application to real product performance, with the intention of affecting future Waymo driving behavior.

Waymo interns partner with leaders in the industry on projects that create impact to the company. We believe learning is a two-way street: applying your knowledge while providing you with opportunities to expand your skill-set. Interns are an important part of our culture and our recruiting pipeline. Join us at Waymo for a fun and rewarding internship!

You will:

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  Collaborate with researchers and engineers to design, development and implement deep reinforcement learning models for autonomous vehicles planning



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  Analyze model performance, triage failure cases, and identify opportunities for improvement. Tune the model as needed to improve performance



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  Stay up- to - date on the latest advancements in autonomous driving and machine learning

You have:

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  Experience with deep learning concepts and reinforcement learning



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  Proficient in Python and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow



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  Currently pursuing a Masters/PhD degrees in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related field

We prefer:

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  Experience in the autonomous driving domain, including areas like motion planning, perception, or control



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  Experience in integrating ML models into complicated systems



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  Proficient in C++



• Conferences such as CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS, IROS, CoRL

Note: This will be a hybrid onsite internship position. We will accept resumes on a rolling basis until the role is filled. To be in consideration for multiple roles, you will need to apply to each one individually - please apply to the top 3 roles you are interested in.

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 Masters Pay

$50.49—$50.49 USD

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

$60.10—$60.10 USD