Senior Program Manager, Release Evaluation Simulated Scenarios

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 Software Quality Operations (SWQOps) team is at the heart of ensuring the safety, reliability, and quality of the Waymo Driver. Our mission is to build an adaptable and scalable operation, increasingly powered by AI, to deliver the crucial insights necessary to confidently deploy and grow Waymo's autonomous vehicle service.

Why This Team is Essential to Waymo's Success: \

Waymo is undergoing unprecedented growth, rapidly expanding into new cities (targeting ~20 new cities by EOY 2026) and launching new vehicle platforms. SWQ Ops plays a critical role in this expansion, making it possible to scale safely and efficiently. The Scenario Operations team within SWQ Ops owns the scaled delivery and maintenance of simulation-based directed testing coverage used to evaluate the Safety and performance of the driver as Waymo continues to scale. In this role on Scenario Operations…

You will:

• Architect Scalable Testing: Own the engine that generates simulation-based safety and performance tests. As Waymo enters 20+ new cities and scales to multiple vehicle platforms, you ensure our testing "factory" scales ahead of the fleet.

• Champion the Internal Customer: Act as a strategic interface between SWQ Ops and Waymo’s test coverage users; translate scaled test requirements into actionable operational delivery plans while providing high-fidelity visibility into progress and risks across a range of customers

• Bridge Tech & Ops: Partner with Simulation and Eval Engineering to support design, roll-out and operationalization of the next generation of AI-assisted tools used by our global vendor teams.

• Drive Operational Excellence: Drive high-quality outcomes through deployments with a global vendor workforce; ensure every simulation test meets Waymo’s requirements through the development of rigorous quality standards and SOPs.

• Lead with Empathy: Mentor a high-performing team of Program Managers and Technical Specialists, fostering a culture of "quality-first" in a high-velocity environment.

You have:

• Bachelor's degree in technical or business discipline

• 10+ years of experience (5+ leading teams) managing complex, tech-enabled operations

• Track record of using data to find bottlenecks and applying Lean/Six Sigma principles to break them.

• Ability to translate operational constraints into technical requirements and experience working across technical partners (Product, Engineering, Data Science, Systems Engineering) to drive outcomes

• Ability to thrive in a high ambiguity, dynamic environment

We prefer:

• Undergraduate in technical degree preferred

• MBA or graduate operations experience preferred

• Experience with Lean / Six Sigma process improvement methodologies

• Ex-consulting experience a plus

• Experience within A / V space and simulation-based test 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
$190,000—$241,000 USD