Foundation Model Data, Software Engineer

Job Summary

The Waymo AI Foundations team is seeking a skilled Software Engineer to build and operate petabyte-scale data systems and ML pipelines. This role will focus on developing and deploying cutting-edge foundation models into the Waymo Driver, ensuring their reliable and efficient deployment.

About the Role

This hybrid role reports to a Principal Research Scientist and will play a crucial role in transforming model innovations into tangible improvements to Waymo’s product.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate petabyte-scale data systems and ML pipelines for foundation model development
• Develop automated, high-performance infrastructure for the dependable and efficient rollout of data solutions
• Wield large-scale compute and frameworks like Flume/Beam and JAX to process massive datasets for training, evaluating, and deploying complex models
• Drive significant leaps in the speed, reliability, and efficiency of the end-to-end ML development lifecycle
• Partner with experts in AI Foundations, ML, and Platform to transform model innovations into tangible improvements to Waymo’s product

Requirements

• Undergraduate degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related technical field of study, or equivalent practical experience
• Proficiency in Python and C++
• Experience building or maintaining large-scale data pipelines or ML infrastructure (e.g., Flume, Spark, Borg, Kubeflow)
• Strong hands-on SWE skills, able to drive development of large, complex shared codebases

Qualifications

• Experience designing and building distributed systems or MLOps platforms (e.g., model versioning, experiment tracking, CI/CD for ML)
• Familiarity with one of the modern deep learning frameworks (e.g. Pytorch, JAX, Tensorflow)
• Experience in AV planning and related research
• Prior work in an industrial or research setting developing methodologies for data-centric improvement of ML models
• Data curation experience and multimodal experience

Benefits

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
• Retail 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