Machine Learning Engineer - VLM/LLM Integration

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 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 mission of the Waymo AI Foundations team is to develop machine learning solutions addressing open problems in autonomous driving, towards the goal of safely operating Waymo vehicles in dozens of cities and under all driving conditions. As part of our work, we also initiate and foster collaborations with other research teams in Alphabet. AI Foundations areas that we are currently focusing on include reinforcement learning, learning from demonstration, generative modeling, Bayesian inference, hierarchical learning, and robust evaluation.

This role follows a hybrid work schedule and reports to a Senior Staff Software Engineer.

You will:

•
Work with a creative team of people who help to design, train, and evaluate the large-scale ML models that are used throughout Waymo’s systems, both onboard autonomous vehicles and offboard in simulation

•
Development of ML framework and infrastructure required for integrating state-of-the-art LLM/VLM models into Waymo's diverse production environments

•
Work with Waymo's perception and planning teams to transfer AI Foundational research into scalable and production-ready solutions

You have:

•
Bachelor or Master’s degree in Computer Science, similar technical field of study, or equivalent practical experience

•
3+ years of experience with Python

•
3+ years of ML software experience with machine learning frameworks including PyTorch, TensorFlow, Jax/Flax

We prefer:

•
Extensive ML infra experience: specifically in the automation of training, evaluating, and deploying large-scale models in production environments

•
Deep learning experience, especially with generative models, e.g., LLMs/VLMs, and/or reinforcement learning

•
Advanced proficiency in the internal architecture and performance tuning of ML frameworks like Pytorch, JAX, or Tensorflow

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
$175,000—$221,000 USD