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 mission of the Waymo AI Foundations team is to develop machine learning solutions addressing open problems in autonomous driving, towards the goal of safely operating Waymo vehicles in dozens of cities and under all driving conditions. As part of our work, we also initiate and foster collaborations with other research teams in Alphabet. AI Foundations areas that we are currently focusing on include reinforcement learning, learning from demonstration, generative modeling, Bayesian inference, hierarchical learning, and robust evaluation.

This role follows a hybrid work schedule and reports to a Principal Research Scientist.

You will:

Use Multimodal LLMs to perform 3D detection
Develop and maintain scalable data pipelines for Training & Eval to process data from multiple sources.
Design and implement evaluation frameworks for perception models.
Study and analyze different behaviors of this model, such as scaling efficacy, downstream quality implications, model architecture design ablations, etc.
Design and implement Perception Modeling solutions to understand LiDAR/Camera/Radar information from autonomous vehicle sensors.
Communicate with both technical and non-technical audiences regarding research motivations and research findings.
Conduct cutting-edge research and potentially communicating research findings to the wider academic community via technical reports and/or publications.

You have:

BS/MS degree in Computer Science or a similar discipline, or an equivalent amount of deep learning experience.
5+ years of experience with Deep Learning and Generative Models.
Familiarity with major ML Frameworks (JAX, Tensorflow, Pytorch)
Strong coding skills in Python.

We prefer:

PhD degree in Computer Science or a similar discipline, or an equivalent amount of deep learning research experience.
Publications at top-tier conferences like CVPR/ICCV/ECCV/ICLR/ICML/NeurIPS/IROS/CoRL etc.
Substantial involvement in and contributions to high impact industry AI projects.
Experience in generative models for domains such as world models, images, videos, 3D, human animation, traffic, and/or simulation, using techniques such as diffusion or autoregressive models.

In accordance with Washington state law, we are highlighting our comprehensive benefits package, which is available to all eligible US based employees. Benefits for this role include:

Health, dental, vision, life, disability insurance
Retirement Benefits: 401(k) with company match
Paid Time Off: 20 days of vacation per year, accruing at a rate of 6.15 hours per pay period for the first five years of employment
Sick Time: 40 hours/year (statutory, where applicable); 5 days/event (discretionary)
Maternity Leave (Short-Term Disability + Baby Bonding): 28-30 weeks
Baby Bonding Leave: 18 weeks
Holidays: 13 paid days per year

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

$251,000—$310,000 USD

Staff Research Scientist, Perception Research