Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Planning

Waymo
$204,000-$259,000 USD
United States, California, Mountain View
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway (Show on map)
Apr 29, 2025
Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company with the mission to be the 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 One, a fully autonomous ride-hailing service, and can also be applied to a range of vehicle platforms and product use cases. The Waymo Driver has provided over one million rider-only trips, enabled by its experience autonomously driving tens of millions of miles on public roads and tens of billions in simulation across 13+ U.S. states. The Predictive Planning team (PrePlan) develops and deploys state-of-the-art machine learning solutions that predict the future state of the world and plan the Waymo Driver's behavior. Our mission is to transform Waymo's unprecedented scale of driving data into robust, generalizable, and performant deep neural networks. These models enable the autonomous vehicle to navigate complex environments safely and efficiently. In this hybrid role, you will report to a member on our PrePlan team. Team matching happens after you've completed your onsite interviews. You will: Design, train machine learning models in TensorFlow and/or JAX, and deploy machine learning models into production. Transform ambiguous, real-world challenges into precise engineering/ML problems. Create the necessary tools, algorithms, evaluation methods, implement ML solutions on Google's extensive data infrastructure, and optimize them for real-time execution within vehicles. Collaborate with researchers, product area owners and engineers to develop safe, smooth, and predictive planning behavior for all road users & deliver product requirements. You have: BS in Computer Science, ML, Robotics, similar technical field of study, or equivalent practical experience Hands-on experience with modern deep learning libraries (eg: TensorFlow, JAX, Pytorch) Proficient programming skills (eg: Python, C/C++) Strong analytical and debugging skills 5+ years of experience in Machine Learning modeling and/or Autonomous Vehicles We prefer: MS or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related field. Publications in top-tier conferences such as ICML, NeurIPS, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICLR, IROS, CoRL, ACL, or EMNLP. Prior software development or ML research industry experience (including internships). General software engineering experience solving motion planning or related robotics problems. Experience applying or evaluating ML-based systems in production environments. Experience with performance optimization of deep models, including with respect to specific hardware architectures #LI-Hybrid Our benefits are held Alphabet-Wide, inclusive of incredible maternity leave, health care, and retirement planning. 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 $204,000 — $259,000 USD