Lead Technical Program Manager, Simulation

Strategic Leadership & Vision

You Will:

• Partner with Simulation, ML Research (AI Foundations), Perception, and Planner leadership to define and drive the long term vision and strategy for Waymo's Simulation and ML Evaluation platforms.

ML Integration

You Will:

• Drive the execution of programs that integrate simulation deeply into the ML development loop, establishing a seamless, reliable path for model training, offline evaluation, and validation.

Transformational Program Delivery

You Will:

• Lead complex, cross functional programs to platformatize and scale evaluation infrastructure, incorporating ML based simulation and advanced technologies to accelerate developer velocity.

Resource & Capacity Optimization

You Will:

• Own program resourcing, budget allocation, and capacity planning for the Simulation and Evaluation domain, forecasting future compute/infrastructure needs and optimizing utilization.

Influence & Alignment

You Will:

• Navigate ambiguity and manage critical upstream/downstream dependencies across organizational boundaries, serving as a trusted technical partner to Engineering and Product leadership.

Team Development & People Management

You Will:

• Build, mentor, and lead a high performing team of Technical Program Managers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, accountability, and continuous professional growth.

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

Leadership Experience

• 3+ years of experience directly managing and developing teams of TPMs or software engineers.

ML Domain Expertise

• Proven track record of managing complex technical programs involving the Machine Learning platforms (data pipelines, training, evaluation frameworks, or ML infrastructure).

Program Scale

• Experience leading transformational, cross functional programs end-to-end, with a history of managing timelines, risks, and dependencies across senior stakeholders.

Technical Judgment

• Strong technical judgment with the ability to contribute to strategic technical direction, analyze architectural trade offs, and balance velocity vs. quality.

TPM Experience

• 10+ years of experience as a Technical Program Manager in a software engineering, large scale infrastructure, or ML environment.

We Prefer

• Advanced ML Ops: Experience with large scale model evaluation (e.g. Foundation Models, LLMs, VLMs), closed-loop simulation, and correlating offline metrics with online product performance.
• Scale Infrastructure: Experience with cloud based ML platforms, high performance computing (TPUs/GPUs), and large scale data management and validation.
• ML Based Simulation: Familiarity with advanced simulation technologies, including ML based scene generation (e.g. NeRF, Gaussian Splatting, Diffusion, etc.) and reactive agent modeling.
• Developer Platforms: Experience building or managing ML developer platforms or tooling that simplifies complex engineering stacks.
• Organizational Transformation: Demonstrated success in driving organizational change, simplifying interfaces between teams, and improving organizational efficiency.

Advanced Degree

• Master's degree or PhD in a technical field, ideally related to AI/ML or Robotics.

Pay

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.