Waymo

Senior Staff Software Engineer, Simulation

San Francisco, CA, USA; Mountain View, CA, USA; New York, NY, USA Full Time

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.

This Senior Tech Lead role will lead technical projects across the Simulator. The ideal candidate has a broad knowledge of simulation and can work effectively with cross-functional partners. Example projects include building up a strategy for building, deploying, and scaling new sim capabilities relevant for newer Waymo deployments like freeway and challenging weather as well as building new sim capabilities to address complex long-tail evaluation needs.

You Will:

  • Define and drive the technical strategy for the full lifecycle of issue response within the Simulator, from automated detection and root cause analysis to the deployment of both temporary mitigations and permanent software fixes, as well as preventing future regressions.
  • Lead complex, cross-functional technical initiatives to enhance automated issue detection by integrating new data sources and signals, and by minimizing the time from an in-field event to mitigation deployment.
  • Collaborate closely with Data Science, Systems Engineering and operations teams to streamline technical processes and tools, accelerating the deployment and validation of solutions and mitigations for issues identified in theDrive technical alignment and consensus across multiple engineering stakeholders regarding Simulator strategy, system architecture, and project execution.
  • Mentor mid-level and junior engineers on complex technical problems, best practices in system architecture, and high-quality software development, acting as a technical force multiplier.

You Have:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
  • 10+ years of experience in software engineering.
  • Significant experience (3+ years) acting as a technical lead, owning the end-to-end architecture and delivery of large-scale software projects.
  • Expertise with C++ and/or Python.
  • Demonstrated knowledge of the Simulator and $\text{SimEval}$ ecosystem.

We Prefer:

  • Master's degree or PhD in Computer Science or a related field.
  • Experience building or significantly contributing to SRE or operations-focused engineering systems.
  • Proven track record of successfully leading complex, cross-functional projects with multiple stakeholders to completion, particularly within a robotics or autonomous systems domain.
  • Experience with large-scale data processing, robotics, or safety-critical systems.

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
$281,000$356,000 USD