Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Waymo
Vehicle Interaction & Behaviour Policy ML
$213-263k
+ Bonus + Equity
Office located in Mountain View, CA
Autonomous driving technology
Be an early applicant
Autonomous driving technology
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$213-263k
+ Bonus + Equity
Office located in Mountain View, CA
1001+ employees
Company mission
To make it simpler and safer for people to move things and themselves around.
Role
Who you are
- 2–5+ years experience training and releasing ML models in autonomous driving, robotics, or complex spatial AI
- Hands-on experience working across both perception and planning stacks. Proficiency in learned driving policies (RL / imitation learning), PyTorch / JAX, closed-loop simulator evaluation, and a track record of releasing models to production
- Familiarity with Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models and World Models is a strong plus
- Experience using foundation models and AI tools for scenario generation, evaluation analysis, and rapid experimentation
What the job involves
- Autonomy MLE role focused on bridging perception and planning to develop and release robust learned driving policies. The primary objective of this role is to train, evaluate, and transition production-ready decision-making models into real-world autonomous navigation systems
- In this hybrid role, you will report to the Technical Lead Manager of the Special Vehicle Compliance team
- Develop, evaluate, and release learned driving policies for complex navigation and yielding scenarios
- Work cross-functionally at the intersection of perception and planning, translating multi-modal perception outputs into robust behavioral actions
- Deploy learned models into closed-loop simulation environments, benchmark against strict safety metrics, and drive the transition of these models into production releases
- Advance the transition from rule-based heuristics to scalable, data-driven learned policies
Our take
Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving car company, is changing the way people get around. Its robotaxis, which don't need a human driver, are already operating in cities like Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Austin. Soon, Waymo will expand to Detroit, Las Vegas, and San Diego, showing just how autonomous cars are moving from experiments to real-world transportation.
The company has already completed over 10M fully driverless rides and driven more than 100M miles. Its cars use advanced sensors and AI to navigate streets safely, while partnerships with Uber and DoorDash show that Waymo's technology works for both passengers and deliveries. And it's feeling ambitious too, hoping to offer one million trips per week by the end of 2026.
Even with competitors like Tesla and Zoox, Waymo is leading the autonomous ride-hailing market. Its cars have fewer crashes and keep passengers safer than traditional vehicles. With international plans for London and Japan, Waymo isn't just growing in the US; it's setting its sights on shaping the future of transportation worldwide.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-1% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Feb 2026
$16bn
LATE VC
Aug 2024
$5.6bn
SERIES C
Total funding: $27.1bn
Company benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and dependents
- Employee assistance programs focused on mental health
- Personalized workplace adjustments for diverse needs and abilities, including physical, mental, and neurodivergent considerations
- Access to mental health apps
- Onsite wellness centers
- Second medical opinion for you and your loved ones
- Medical advocacy program for transgender employees
- Counseling services
- Support programs including menopause benefit
- Competitive compensation
- Regular bonus and equity performance grant opportunities
- Generous 401(k) and regional retirement plans
- Annual cross-company compensation review and pay equity analysis
- 1-on-1 financial coaching
- Fertility and growing family assistance
- Parental leave and baby bonding leave
- Caregiver leave
- Elder care and support
- Backup childcare
- Survivor income benefit
- Paid time off, including vacation, bereavement, sick leave, parental leave, disability, and holidays
- Jury duty leave
- Military leave
- Hybrid work model with remote work opportunities also available
- Educational reimbursement
- Peer learning and coaching platform
- Donation matching programs
- Employee resource groups
- Volunteer hours
- Internal community groups and local culture clubs
- Inspiring spaces to work, recharge, and collaborate with fellow Waymonauts
- On-site meals and snacks
- Fitness centers, massage programs, and ergonomic support
- On-demand fitness, wellbeing, and cooking classes
- Commuter benefits
Company HQ
Mountain View, CA
Leadership
Dmitri Dolgov
(Co-CEO)Dmitri joined Waymo in 2016 as CTO, becoming Co-CEO in 2021. Prior to this, he spent nearly 8 years at Google as a Distinguished Software Engineer and 2 years at Toyota Research Institute as a Senior Research Scientist.
Tekedra N. Mawakana
(Co-CEO)Tekedra joined Waymo in 2017 as the Global Head of Policy, holding various roles before becoming Co-CEO in 2021. Previously, she was the VP of Global Government Relations and Public Policy at eBay and VP and Deputy General Counsel of GLobal Public Policy at Yahoo.
Salary benchmarks
We don't have enough data yet to provide salary benchmarks for this role.
Submit your salary to help other candidates with crowdsourced salary estimates.
Share this job
View 198 more jobs at Waymo