Senior Research Scientist, World Action Modeling

Job Summary

The Waymo AI Foundations team is seeking a researcher to design and implement generative world action modeling solutions. This role involves developing scalable data pipelines, evaluating model behaviors, and collaborating with internal teams to apply these models to Waymo products.

About the Role

This role follows a hybrid work schedule and reports to a Staff Research Scientist / Tech Lead Manager. The ideal candidate will have a PhD in Computer Science or equivalent deep learning research experience, with 5+ years of experience in deep learning and generative models.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement generative world action modeling solutions to simulate future world states and generate policies for embodied agents (autonomous vehicles).
• Develop and maintain scalable data pipelines to process data from multiple sources.
• Design and implement evaluation strategies for world action models.
• Study and analyze different behaviors of this model, such as scaling efficacy, downstream quality implications, model architecture design ablations, etc.
• Conduct cutting-edge research and potentially communicate research findings to the wider academic community via technical blog posts, technical reports, and/or publications.
• Collaborate inclusively across Waymo/Alphabet to apply developed techniques to Waymo products.

Requirements

• PhD degree in Computer Science or a similar discipline, or an equivalent amount of deep learning research experience, with 5+ years of experience with Deep Learning and Generative Models.
• Strong coding skills in Python and strong familiarity with major ML Frameworks (JAX, Tensorflow, Pytorch).
• Strong familiarity with AI tools in day to day work.
• Experience in large-scale distributed training and different forms of parallelism.
• Experience in generative models for domains such as world models, images, videos, 3D, human animation, traffic, and/or simulation, using techniques such as diffusion and/or autoregressive models.
• Publishations 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.
• First-hand experience in, and direct contributions to training large world models/world-action models.
• Familiarity with Reinforcement Learning in simulation environments.

Qualifications

• Experience in large-scale distributed training and different forms of parallelism.
• Experience in generative models for domains such as world models, images, videos, 3D, human animation, traffic, and/or simulation, using techniques such as diffusion and/or autoregressive models.
• Substantial involvement in and contributions to high impact industry AI projects.
• First-hand experience in, and direct contributions to training large world models/world-action models.
• Familiarity with Reinforcement Learning in simulation environments.

Skills

• Strong coding skills in Python and strong familiarity with major ML Frameworks (JAX, Tensorflow, Pytorch).
• Strong familiarity with AI tools in day to day work.
• Experience in large-scale distributed training and different forms of parallelism.
• Experience in generative models for domains such as world models, images, videos, 3D, human animation, traffic, and/or simulation, using techniques such as diffusion and/or autoregressive models.
• Substantial involvement in and contributions to high impact industry AI projects.
• First-hand experience in, and direct contributions to training large world models/world-action models.
• Familiarity with Reinforcement Learning in simulation environments.

Benefits

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.