Software 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 Weather and Degraded Roads Perception team builds features that enable the Waymo driver to behave safely and comfortably in the presence of rain, fog, snow, ice, potholes, unpaved roads, trenches, and construction sites. In collaboration with the planner and control teams, we think broadly about how we want the vehicle to behave in these conditions and make every effort to accomplish our goals. Most of the team's work consists of designing new perception features, developing and retraining ML models, and building hybrid onboard/offboard systems to coordinate fleetwide behaviors. We also work with Vision Language Models (VLMs) to enable appropriate driving behavior in long-tail situations.

In this hybrid role, you'll report to a Technical Lead Manager.

You will:

• Work with a creative team of people who are responsible for the vehicle's behavior in inclement weather and around degraded roads.


• Develop hybrid onboard+offboard systems to coordinate the behavior of a fleet of autonomous vehicles.


• Work on a cutting edge project at the intersection of machine learning and fleet automation.

You have:

• BS in Computer Science, ML, Robotics, similar technical field of study, or equivalent practical experience


• 5+ years of industry experience


• Experience building distributed systems and working with server-side technologies like databases, RPCs, work-queues, etc.


• Experience programming in Python and C++


• Experience with building, training, integrating, debugging and evaluating ML-based systems


• Software architecture and design skills

We prefer:

• MS in Computer Science, ML, Robotics, similar technical field of study, or equivalent practical experience


• Experience with autonomous vehicles (L4) or ADAS systems (L2/L3)


• Experience with sensor data processing (Lidar, Camera, or Radar)


• Experience applying Machine Learning to Perception problems

#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

$170,000—$216,000 USD