Senior Staff Data Architect, Waymo

• BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent
• 12+ years of experience leading the design, implementation, and operations of multi-Petabyte Data Lake/Data Warehouse solutions in high-growth companies
• Proven track record of being the Lead Architect driving significant data governance and data platform maturity transitions (e.g., ad-hoc ➔ standardized)
• Deep experience driving a data infrastructure org through rapid growing phrase, effectively balancing speed for analysts with central governance guardrails
• Expert-level technical depth in distributed batch/streaming frameworks (e.g., C++, Flume, Apache Spark, Flink)
• Highly effective cross-functional influencer; capable of driving alignment across hundreds of Stakeholders (Director+ levels, Embedded Eng, Data Science)

Desirable

• Define and drive the global architectural roadmap for Waymo's Data Lake, governing the transition from ad-hoc processing to a production-grade, highly scalable analytical ecosystem
• Serve as the ultimate Tech Lead (TL) over cross-domain data pipelines, governing dependencies and maintaining platform consistency across both centralized infrastructure and embedded product domains
• Champion and enforce linear DAG architectures and modern Lakehouse/Medallion standards to untangle highly coupled, opaque "spaghetti" lineage
• Chair centralized Data Design Review forums, establishing unified standards for modularized code, testing suite enforcement, DAG dependency registration, and environmentalization
• Architect common, self-service frameworks and "Managed Pipeline Services" (like hardened wrappers and templates) for downstream consumption by Data Engineers and Product Data Scientists
• Oversee core integration strategies for Data Governance, ensuring privacy (GDPR), access Control (IAM/RBAC), and pipeline compliance are deeply baked into core architecture