Technical Program Manager, Foundation Model Engagements

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's Technical Program Managers are accountable for Waymo's roadmap execution by providing thoughtful cross-functional planning, clarity, and proactive risk management. In the face of complex technical and operational challenges with no established playbooks to follow, we act with thoughtful urgency, driving conversations, discussions, and outcomes. Our team partners closely with every function of Waymo to structure, own and drive work towards real-world deployments of the Waymo Driver across platforms and geographies.

This role follows a hybrid work schedule and you will report to a Director of Program Management.

The Waymo Foundation Model (WaymoFM) program is at the heart of Waymo's long term plan. We build large-scale "teacher" models that improve our onboard and offboard systems. We are seeking a Technical Program Manager for FM Engagements to own the critical link between our Foundation Model efforts and our core product teams: Onboard and Simulation. This role is pivotal in ensuring that the groundbreaking advancements from our teacher models translate into tangible improvements in the Waymo Driver. You will be responsible for the end-to-end management of these engagements - from planning and requirements definition to execution and impact reporting - ensuring seamless collaboration and delivery in line with our product goals and our collaboration tenets.

You will:

• Collaborate with teams to establish clear, actionable roadmaps, requirements, and success metrics for all foundation model engagements.

• Drive translation of high-level product needs into specific teacher model deliverables, distillation targets, and evaluation plans for onboard releases.

• Proactively identify cross-team dependencies, manage technical risks, and align schedules to ensure the smooth integration of teacher models with their student counterparts.

• Drive the day-to-day execution of multiple parallel engagements, ensuring models are delivered on schedule and meet the agreed-upon quality and performance bars.

• Facilitate communication and serve as the primary point of contact between teams, resolving blockers and navigating technical challenges.

• Manage the end-to-end model delivery process, from teacher model hand-off and distillation to student model integration and validation for product releases.

• Lead retrospectives and post-mortems to capture learnings and continuously refine the engagement model between research and production.

You have:

• A Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field

• 5+ years of experience as a Technical Program Manager in a software engineering environment

• A proven track record of successfully managing complex technical projects involving machine learning and/or AI

• Experience with work on applied AI/ML and/or research-to-production technology transfer

• Excellent communication, interpersonal, and presentation skills, effectively conveying technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences

• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and technical judgment skills

We prefer:

• Experience with machine learning models, training pipelines, or evaluation frameworks

• Experience with large language models (LLMs), vision language models, generative AI (diffusion models), large-scale model training, optimization, and scaling techniques

• Experience with cloud-based machine learning platforms and infrastructure

• Strong background in 3D computer vision, sensor fusion (camera, lidar), spatial reasoning, and 3D reconstruction methods (NeRF, Gaussian Splatting)

• Experience with simulation environments for autonomous systems, model validation strategies, and methods to ensure model reliability

• Experience with model evaluation techniques, metrics, time-series analysis, and predictive modeling using sensor data

• Master's degree or PhD in a related field

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
$196,000—$248,000 USD